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OWNERSHIP AND SOVEREIGNTY jF 



AN OUTLINE OF 



THE TRUE REPUBLIC 



BY 



David Reeves Smith. 



s1 r 



" Men of thought, be up and stirring 

Night and day ; 

Sow the seed, withdraw the curtain. 

Clear the way ; 

Men of science, aid and cheer them. 

As ye may" 






COHOES, N. Y.: 

Clark & Foster, Publishers and Printers. 

1883. 



■;■ 






Copyright, 1883, 

By DAVID REEVES SMITH 

All rights reserved. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



In presenting " Ownership and Sovereignty " to its readers, I am permitted, in 
behalf of its author, now in a foreign country, to publish the following letter from 
Wendell Phillips, — one man at least for whom both the thinking and toiling 
masses of the American people have the most hearty respect ; for they under- 
stand, more or less clearly, that he has devoted the firmest brain, the most alert 
conscience and the most eloquent tongue of his age, to asserting the rights of 
man and expounding the duties of a free government. For such service he has 
asked literally nothing in return : — no political office, no gifts or perquisites, 
and not even the appreciation of his contemporaries. 

The opinion of an ordinary public man, on a work like this,— any of our 
nominally " great statesmen " and the like, — would not be worth the room to 
print it. It would be given with one eye cocked on the next election, and the 
other on the bank-deposit of some gigantic monopolist whom the " great states- 
man " might fear to offend. But no suggestion of this sort is possible in connec- 
tion with the peerless fame of Wendell Phillips. His word stands for some- 
thing — means something. 

It will be observed that Mr. Phillips does not merely recognize the profound 
ability of our author and the great value of his work, but does him the honor, 
also, to suggest some very interesting negative criticism of certain details in the 
working-out of his system. In the absence of Mr. Smith, I shall venture to say 
that no inventive mechanic, drafting a new machine, — especially one so vast and 
complicated as "the true republic,"— would expect to cover all the details exactly 
as they would appear in the ultimate, perfected engine of government. Such 
particulars always require the wisdom, the ingenuity and the corrective patience 
of the whole human race. Mr. Smith would simply maintain that a true repub- 
lic is a definite and unmistakable thing, both in principle and practical applica- 
tion, and must inevitably be developed, with the nature of man and his surround- 
ings, substantially in accordance with the outline here given. 

E. G. C. 



LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Boston, 13tii A.UGT., '88. 
My Dear Clark : 

Thank you for ;i sight of your friend Reeves Smith's 

"OWNERSHIP AND SOVEREIGNTY." 

It is certainly an able statement and profound discussion of a very dillieult 
problem; and his suggestions for its solution are ingenious and of great value. 
Especially do I admire his definitions of terms and things ; and this is a rare 
talent A correct delinition is often half way to the solution of a problem.— 
Take, for instance, his definition of Rent. 

I have never seen my way to a reorganization of society. Take all the attrac- 
tive methods suggested, and it seems to mc that, after every one of them had 
been accomplished, we should look back to our present system regretting thai 
the change had been made. Still, the discussion is one of immense value, and I 
study every method offered with profound interest. 

Mr. Smith's approval of soft money marks him a child of the coming era. Bui 
I think his plan for the working of such a system too artificial. It is not self- 
acting enough, — has not within it the needed element of self-regulation Inter- 
changeable Bonds and Currency strike mc better. 

I fear his " Perpetual Elections " would not work. Recognizing as I do .the 
evident advantage, in some respects, of his plan, it seems to me human nature is 
not, and never will be, ready for it. No matter what be the method by which 
the people create a Government, the machine once set up must be given a deli 
nite term of life. Somewhere in Society there must be something that gowifii 
and has time to mature its plans — otherwise society is a quicksand. I agree that 
the representation of minorities is absolutely necessary in any just government ; 
and doubtless something to secure this will be our next stept. Until then our 
system is incomplete and works evil. But his plan lakes out too many rivets. 

The study of the French Revolution is evidence enough for me that two cham- 
bers of legislation are indispensable. Since that experiment the one-chamber 
plan does noi bear argument. I stand wholly with Washington in Laboulaye's 
story. When Jefferson, just home from France, was advocating, at the tea-table, 
t lie superiority of one chamber, Washington said : "Sir, you have just proved 
the superiority of two chambers by your own act. You poured your tea from 
the cup into the saucer to cool. We want two chambers to cool things. No, we 
cannot gel along without the saucer in our system.' 

1 seem to have done nothing but criticise. But please remember I never should 
have troubled you with such detailed criticism had I not regarded your friend's 
essay as one of rare ability and great value ; sure to sel many men to thinking 
and likely to win the assent of many. 

Cordially, 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

I'. S. " Your introduction, by the way, is an admirable piece of literary 
work — cogent, crisp, clear, and of grand sweep. You have condensed and 
marshalled the plan and statements of your author in so masterly a manner that- 
the reader is even tempted to mistake his clear perception of what is maintained 
for sufficient evidence of its truth. You cannot tail to help your author in mak- 
ing converts. Your pen ought never to have retired from journalism." 



INTRODUCTION 

By EDWARD GORDON CLARK 



When this volume was about, to be published, the author placed it in nvy 
hands, desiring a few suggestions connected with its literary form, such as a man 
who had spent much of his life among books might give to a friend whose ener- 
gies had been chiefly devoted to grappling with the practical thought and toil of 
the business world. While complying with my friend's request, his work has so 
grown upon my mind that a volume, small in size and wholly unpretentious in 
style, appears to me the largest generalization ever born of political economy, 
and destined to take the next five hundred years, at least, into the grasp of its 
profound and comprehensive thought. As Adam and David stand in the history 
of Israel, so Adam Smith and David Smith must stand, to date, in the annals of 
their special science. 

This, of course, is saying a great deal, — so much that it may easily be mistaken 
for exaggeration, especially in the hopeful, not to say glorious daj r s which have 
produced a Henry George. For has not this gentleman endowed his age with 
that magnificent work, " Progress and Poverty ?" Not in New York or London, 
nor in Paris, Dublin or Leipsic, lias Mr. George's book found a more attentive 
and admiring reader than myself. It is not merely what the cumbrous intellect 
of the London Times describes as containing " many shrewd suggestions, and 
criticism of economic doctrine which future writers on political economy must 
either refute or accept :" it is rather as the Philadelphia Star puts it, "a trumpet- 
call to a struggle which cannot long be avoided ;" or as the Episcopal Register 
says, "a startling novelty shown to be simple ; socialism become conservative ; 
revolution turned reasonable." 

Moreover, Mr. George's theory, — that the land of the world belongs to the 
people of the world, — has only to be stated and explained to stand self-evident 
forever. A farm worth a hundred dollars, or even a desert worth nothing, may 
soon become worth a hundred millions of dollars, by the mere settlement upon it 
of some thousands of industrious people. What puts the increased value into 
that piece of land ? The presence alone of all those people. Then who should 
enjoy the increment they produce ? Unmistakably all those people. In short, 
since Mr. George has lived and written, the land-tenures of the world have died: 
moral justice, the soul of them, has departed, leaving only the stately corpse of 
conventional law. It may take a few centuries to bury this corpse, even in 
America. But the funeral is certain. 

Yet even Henry George, as it appears to me, must be considered a mastd'ty 
specialist in political economy, rather than the exhaustive philosopher of the 
whole field. He has swept away the old cobweb, spun by Adam Smith,— that 



vi Introduction. 

wages necessarily spring from capital, instead of from the Labor which it&ell 
earns them at every step. He has swept away the other old cobweb spun by 
Malthas, — that the increase of human beings must outrun the food for their 
subsistence. As these cobwebs go into the ash-barrel of myths and superstitions, 
a full money-bag can no longer look on a hungry and ragged child of toil, with 
the self-satisfying soliloquy that an empty stomach and a shivering body fulfil] 
the requirements of fate or the laws of God. Henceforth, in political economy, 
there is no room for a hog, and no excuse for a thief. 

Thus the negative work of "Progress and Poverty" is complete, while its 
literary entertainment is a rival of romance. Nor do I question for a moment 
the greatness of its positive contribution to the march of events. That, too, is 
perfect, as far as it goes. If the law of God's actual justice were applied to land, 
a large province of the millenium would be secured. Let us honor the guide who 
leads us to that province ; but let us not fail to occupy the whole realm. 

To reclaim the lost rights of the people to the common ownership of land, — 
to tax out of it the increment which legal larceny has turned over to individuals, 
— however just this reform may be, is it tuleqante? Is it all? 

Let us see. 

According to what may be called the abstract definition of land by Mr. 
George, that term includes " not merely the surface of the earth as distin- 
guished from the water and the air, but the whole material universe outside of 
man himself." But is it this abstract land that Mr. George purposes to tax V Is 
it this sum of all natural wealth that he would restore to its common owners, by 
legal confiscation through the tax collector V Certainly not. It is actual, not 
abstract land, — land in the ordinary sense, — which he means at this point. It is 
the speculator's reservations, the farm and the city lot,— the acres of the nations. 

And here let us pause ; let us think. Is it the population of the world, with 
their needs and desires, whose presence has created the chief value of these 
acres ? No doubt of it. Henry George has settled that matter. But is it not 
also the presence of the people, with their needs and desires, and with the com- 
petition among them, that creates the chief value of everything else, as well as of 
land ? How little value would attach to labor itself, — all the labor of modern 
civilization, — were it not for the presence off men ami women to utilize its 
products ! 

Then, again, have not the rich bowels of the land been taken out of it, for 
thousands of years, and turned into other forms of wealth V Do they not glitter 
as diamonds, and pass current as coins ? Arc they not piled up in the walls of 
castles and palaces, ware-houses and dwellings, throughout the nations ¥ Do 
they not span the rivers as bridges, and ride the oceans underpressure of sail and 
steam? And how is land to be rightly taxed, with this superior half of it 
omitted V The question is its own answer. The thing cannot be done. 

So, after all, it is "land" in Mr. George's abstract definition,— land with every 
thing on it and connected with it,— which really belongs to the people ; which 
really obtains nearly all the value it possesses through the presence, the needs 
and desires of the people as a whole ; and the common ownership of which should 
tored to the children of the people, through the peaceful conquest of the 
tax roll. But land in this sense is Bimply the wealth of the globe. 

And just here is the beginning of this book, "Ownership and Sovereignty." 
.lust here, too, 18 the beginning of ownership and sovereignty in the nature of 
things, and the beginning of political economy in the system of David Reeves 
Smith. 



Introduction. vii 

Id the constitution of the universe exist two elements, the conscious and the 
unconscious ; or, we may say all sentient life and all the estate of matter. But. 
the estate of matter has no object in itself. Its only use is to be possessed by the 
sentient, the conscious, — to counterpart the needs and desires of living creatures. 
The title, then, of the conscious to the unconscious, vests directly in the structure 
of the Absolute ; and man, standing at the head of sentiency and consciousness, 
is the paramount possessor and tenant of the earth. But, simply because this 
primary title vests in the fundamental nature of man and matter, his possession 
is joint and common. No one man has the holding. The birthright of every 
human being is his equal share. Practically, indeed, as well as logically, there 
is no otiier ground on which to stand. For. if man's possession of the earth were 
not a common right, the occupation and monopoly of one man could even 
exclude and destroy another's life ; and the continuance of such exclusion and 
destruction would leave neither life nor title in anybody. Such, indeed, has 
been the precise historical fact, through all the " good old times" of blood 
rapine and murder. 

By these presents, therefore, — the construction of the universe and the will of 
God, — be it known that mankind jointly hold the original, indefeasible title deed 
to all the kingdoms of the world. 

But what about the improvements which have been made upon the primitive 
holding ? — the forests cleared, the fields planted, the cities built V To whom do 
these improvements accrue ? To him, certainly, who made them, so far as they 
include the exact value of his intelligence, enterprise and labor. They may be 
called his, indeed, for himself and his heirs, so long as the natural rent be paid 
to mankind for his building-spot and his original materials. For mankind is no 
English-Irish landlord, draining the life-blood of his tenants to make him rich 
and then turning them out on the road to starve. The common ownership of all 
wealth constitutes mankind a landlord, and the only landlord whose tenures rest 
on moral law. But what is the principle of moral law which governs this laud- 
lord himself ? He must s6 rent his holdings,— so distribute his wealth, — that, 
while the common-estate shall be managed to the best possible advantage in the 
interest of all, every individual shall reap the full reward of what he sows. The 
common ownership of the earth by all the .people means the special life-ownership 
of some share by each person. One right is the corollary of the other ; and the 
largest share of ownership belongs naturally to the person competent to make it 
most productive, and so to pay the highest rent to the landlord, — the people. 

There is no trouble, therefore, about the just distribution of property. That 
is easy enough, when the principle of it is once understood. And it will take 
care of itself as soon as mankind, — the present dull, easy-going creature, — knows 
that he is the heir to an unlimited estate, and insists upon taxing out of the 
individual squatters who occupy his possessions, the natural rent due to himself 

And here, to use the language of the streets, the author of this book " comes 
right down to business." There is no uncertainty about the amount of this 
natural rent. That, too, is fixed in the constitution of the universe : is as definite 
as any rule of arithmetic. 

The people own the earth. But the people die. Generations ef owners suc- 
ceed eaeh other. Man comes into the world bringing no property, and he can 
take none away. His ownership ends with himself. All men, however, are not 
only created equal, in the sense that they are equally endowed with certain fun- 
damental rights, but they are, at the same time, most unequally endowed with 
capacity, — the capacity, for instance, to acquire wealth. No doubt some men 



viii Introduction. 

are born to be rich, ami sonic poor. But, under just social conditions, th 
tinctioD would be, like all other natural distinctions, a general blessing. If, under 

such conditions, any one individual should even bring the whole globe into his 
hands, the people could have no righl to complain, 80 long as he [><"'<l hU I 
them. The more money he could make for himself, the more he would make for 
them. He would simply be the best tenant to whom they could lease their 
estate. Again, the rent being paid, the people would have no right to say what 
should be done with the excess of it,— the individual's profit. This would be 
private accumulation ; and, both in strict justice and as a stimulant to thrift, the 
individual should unmistakably have the right to consume or bequeath his prop- 
erty according to his will and pleasure. Still, all men die, we remember ; and, 
according to the structure of the Absolute itself, all property reverts to the 
people with the death of each generation. Here are two opposite facts, — the 
right of the people to individual property on the death of its owner, and the 
individual's right to dispose of his own accumulations. But the solvent of these 
opposites, — the one principle in which they both coalesce, — is very simple when 
once discovered. The people as a unit have no common use for their property ; 
individuals have innumerable uses for it. What the people want is security, and 
the interest on their wealth, — the rent of their estate, Then, who cares by whom 
the estate is held ? Well, two men in a hundred die each year ; or let us call 
this the average death-rate, which is merely a question of statistics. If this is 
the death-rate, then just two per cent, of all individual property falls back 
yearly into the common estate. The people, however, have no right to demand 
the reversion direct. If the rent has been paid, the property must go to the 
rightful heirs, and the future rent be collected of them. In other words, the 
people's interest in special reversionary property, as in all property, lies in the 
rent of it. With an annual death-rate of two citizens in a hundred, the natural 
rent of the people's estate,— the annual tax on all wealth, — would of course be 
exactly two per cent, advalorem. 

The general principle here announced has come into the world to stay. It is 
one of those truths which, once discovered, taunts us with blindness that we have 
not always seen it. It is self-evident : that is, it has become a necessary birth in 
the evolution of reason and nature on this planet. But how is the momentous 
principle to be applied V 

I shall preface the answer to this question by some personal reference to the 
author of "Ownership and Sovereignty." Mr. Smith has recently left the United 
, repairing hastily to Mexico, to superintend tin erection of machinery and 
the working of miners. He is a civil and mechanical engineer. His inventive 
scope and constructive ability are such that he considers nothing impossible 
which he believes should be done. To build :i steam-ship, to tunnel the Andes, 
or to erect " The True Republic," would he, to his mind, a definite pier* ol 
work, which he could do, and would contract to do, in so much time for 80 
much money. I do not say that his contracts would invariably end in accord- 
ance with his calculations ; but lie woul 1 never touch any project until he had 
laid it out in every detail, and had considered every objection ever offered to il 
I will add that, at different times in his lite, Mr Smith has come in personal and 
business contact with nearly all races of men, and, trusting no conventional 
authority, has studied at firsl hand their systems of society and government. 
His earliest remembrances are connected with a circle of financiers and specula- 
tors who wcrt- prominent in developing the resources of our own Western States, 
and he has told me that, when eight years of age, — an unnoticed child, amusing 



Introduction. ix 

himself with toys, — he perfectly understood, from the conversation of those 
around him, the business methods by which the great lines of railway have been 
laid across the American Continent, He has since put such operations into 
practice himself, especially in South America. He has been familiar with the 
success of great undertakings. He has been familiar also with the obstacles to 
all grand achievements, as well as with the inertia and selfishness of men, and 
the little-greatness of nearly all politicians under the sun. Finally, Mr. Smith has 
known what it is to be rich, — the pet of millionaires and populace ; and he has 
known what it is to be poor, and to sympathize with men, women and little 
children, who work too hard that others may not work at all, and who have too 
little to eat, to wear, and to keep them warm. Let no sucking babe, therefore, 
among editors, traders, or so-called statesmen, imagine this book to be impracti- 
cable, because it is philosophical and universal. Mr. Smith knows the exact 
calibre of such criticism. He has' both anticipated and ignored a good deal more 
of it than men of the usual size, at the present day, will be apt to offer. 

In an epoch not only of the omnipresent newspaper, but of the telegraph and 
telephone as well, how much has been done toward the next revolution in gov- 
ernment, the next regeneration of society, when the fundamental law of the 
movement has been absolutely determined ! This law is here. This book 
necessitates an addition to the American Declaration of Independence. All men 
are "created equal:" — they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights, among which are life, liberty" and property. 

The author of " Ownership and Sovereignty" would doubtless maintain that, 
with a hundred thousand dollars to establish an organ, ancl with time to spare for 
ten years, he could bring the American public to a comprehension of the natural 
right of each citizen to an indefeasible joint-share of his country's wealth, and 
could prepare the question for the practical treatment of a political issue. He 
fully appreciates the almost ludicrous terror with which a tax on wealth, in pro- 
portion to the holding of it, inspires the rich. Still, since Adam Smith's enun- 
ciation of the principle, who has ever really doubted that " the subjects of every 
State ought to contribute toward the support of the government as nearly as 
possible in proportion to their respective abilities ; that is, in proportion to the 
revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the State ?" 
Man's inherent rights of property acknowledged, and the functions of govern- 
ment understood, this old canon of political science would cover the whole 
process of collecting the people's natural rent, — the annual death-rate tax on 
individual assets. That such a tax could be collected, and redistributed for the 
public good, if the American people should will it done, is no more doubtful 
than that the Income Tax was collected and redistributed, a few years ago. 

Now, if the birth-right to property is as much a natural right of mankind as 
the right to life, liberty and the pursuit cf happiness, it is plain enough that the 
" true republic " is yet a thing of the future, whatever may be orated, on the 
fourth of July, about the star-spangled banner or the American eagle. The fact 
is that the natural right of every citizen of a country to a certain amount of its 
w r ealth is the one right which makes all other rights tenable, and the one right 
alone which can preserve any of the rest. The nations of the world have all 
dodged and denied this fact, to the best of their blind ability : so we dig in their 
graves to day, to find what little is left of them and their logic. But, while 
announcing the principle of natural ownership as the very corner-stone of any 
true political constitution, a man as fully informed as the author of this book 
w r ou:d never mistake that corner- stone for the whole foundation of the structure. 



x Introduction. 

Without an upright system of money, for instance,- one adequate to cover on 
all occasions the exchanges of a country's products, — no government can possibly 
insure a people either liberty or prosperity. Open Berkey on the "Money 
Question." What a tragedy is there, behind that commonplace title, and those 
cold facts and figures ! The whole national war-debt of the United States need- 
lessly but purposely doubled ; the ensuing "hard times" deliberately manufac- 
tured; citizens and soldiers turned into tramps ; women and children ragged and 
starving ! Why ? Merely that Wall street might over-fatten its full pockets, 
through the cunning use of an effete superstition, an exploded humbug, — that 
gold, and gold alone, is " honest money." The only dollar of utter scoundrelism, 
—the only dollar that is never founded on anything else than false pretenses, — 
is a bank bill with a " specie basis," — a promise to pay in gold, when the prom- 
isor knows that he never has, and never can have, ten cents in gold behind his 
dollar, the moment the gold is generally demanded :— when he knows, in short, 
that the limit of the world's gold-crop makes the keeping of his promise a physical 
impossibility. From 1814 to 1873, the people of the United States were buried 
ten times,— once every six years, — under suspended banks, and their play of 
" the honest gold dollar," with the gold left out. It is a play borrowed, against 
the protests of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, from the 
aristocracy of England and their handy bank, by which they sinuously "call in," 
every few years, the fruits of nearly all the enterprise and labor of their kingdom, 
without the trouble of robbery by force of arms, which was the more manly 
method of their forefathers. 

In 1861, Thaddeus Stevens attempted to break up this game of shylocks' 
thimble-rig, as far as his own country was concerned. The government wanted 
materials of war, and the people pledged their lives and property to supply the 
want. The "great commoner" not only understood money, but he had no wish 
to steal it. So he could afford to stand on simple integrity and common-sense. 
He proposed what ? Substantially to issue demand-notes of the United States, 
based on all the gold in the country, and then on all the lands, houses, staples 
and manufactures, — the measure of value to be the gold dollar, and the notes to 
be ultimately redeemable in gold, if anybody should ever be idiotic enough to 
want them "redeemed." But a note drawn and endorsed by every American 
citizen, always due, and current for all commodities and all duties, — when would 
sucli a note have to go to any Hebrew junk-box, in search of a redeemer ? A 
limit to the issue, regulated by government as the agent of the drawers and 
indorsers, — this would of course be needed ; and nothing else. As far as 
Thaddeus Stevens was able to procure the creation of such money, it laughed at 
gold, and rendered it a nuisance, as for six hundred years did the " soft money" 
certificates, — the "rag-baby flats",— of the Bank of Venice. 

But Mr. Stevens' effort, as he himself said, "produced a howl among the 
money-changers as hideous as that sent forth by their Jewish cousins when they 
were kicked out of the temple." The truth was, the banking oligarchy of the 
North saw before them a money, not perfect perhaps, but so righteous at least 
that no question of its redemption could arise among the people at all. But the 
oligarchy knew they could not control it. They could not inflate it a thousand 
per cent, beyond the whole amount of specie in the country, baiting industry to 
plant and build, and then turning round with the scoop of contraction, shrinking 
all values, and shoveling into their vaults whatsoever their simple-minded debtors 
had ventured to produce. The legitimate business of loaning capital for interest 
would still be left to them ; but they would no longer hold the power both to 



Introduction. xi 

rule and ruin the people, at pleasure. This prerogative they determined to keep 
as the priee of their " patriotism," — the bribe for their support of the Union. 
So Thaddeus Stevens was finally obliged to own, with tears of sorrow and wrath, 
that he had surrendered his country to the " bullion-mongers," as something a 
trifle better than surrendering it to the slave-holders. The author of the present 
book, familiar with every system of currency and exchange known to civiliza- 
tion, explains and demands "Just Money;" by which it will be seen that he 
means simply the natural money of labor and of democracy, — the money of the 
people, by the people, for the people, — without which, in some form, a genuine 
republic is not. 

Another indispensable prop of a true republic, he shows to be a people's tariff, 
— a tariff starting from the principle of the common ownership of a country by 
its citizens, and built up logically and mathematically on that basis. This would 
be a "Rational Tariff." 

A tariff is, or should be, simply an adjustment by a nation to utilize its re- 
sources, in commerce with other nations, for the best interests of its own people. 
And a rational tariff,— an honest tariff, — is not a difficult thing to understand. 
The book-keeping of a pea-nut stand is the same thing, on a small scale, as the 
book-keeping of England or France. The curb-stone vendor buys or produces 
his wares as cheap as he can, and sells them for the best price they will bring. 
When one nation deals with another, precisely the same rule should apply. That 
is, while nations stand separate or opposed, a tariff should be a legal method to 
make the most of a country's wealth, directly and indirectly, in trade with for- 
eigners. But a tariff of any kind, imposed to pay the expenses of conducting a 
government, — this is always a mere scheme of the rich and intelligent to dodge 
direct taxation, and to throw their own proper burdens on labor and ignorance. 
The first use of a people's rent for their common estate, — the first application 
of their two per cent, annual tax on assets, — must necessarily be to meet the cur- 
rent expenses of their government, the residue being redistributed for the general 
benefit. 

If to buy low and sell with profit is the principle of all business, the dealings 
of the United States, for instance, with any other country, need produce no con- 
fusion of head, where there is really a head in the case. We should sell our 
commodities for all they will bring in Liverpool, or other foreign market, and 
should buy whatever we need in exchange from such sources with as small an 
outlay as possible. But what would this plain, universal business method involve 
in connection with a tariff ? It would brush away the mendacity and nonsense 
of "proteccion" with one hand, and the needless waste of " free trade" with 
the other. It would put a duty on exports, — on such American products as 
wheat and cotton, which other nations cannot get elsewhere and cannot do with- 
out,— and would admit at their natural, that is, their lowest price, such things 
as Americans might be compelled to buy abroad. 

But a duty on exports, — which always represent the peculiar basic advantages 
of one country over another, — is even more than a principle of business common- 
sense : it is a vital element of self-preservation and patriotic justice. As the ■ 
people of a country are the real owners of its wealth, their government has no 
right to permit their resources to be taken away, without collecting the people's 
share in thorn,— the people's natural rent of all individual possessions,— in the 
shape of an export toll. But as the people's interest in exports cannot be imposed 
as an annual tax, it must be computed in perpetuity. The author of "Ownership 



xii Introduction. 

and Sovereignty," therefore, sums upa " rational tariff " as an ad valorem duty 
on exports, which would be about twenty per cent. 

The annual expenses of the general government of the United States are some 
two hundred and sixty millions of dollars, — a sum which should of course be 
raised by direct taxation. But the rich shrink from this straight stroke of justice 
as they shrink from nothing else save the gripe of death ; and, as they own both 
the politicians and the editors, they use these classes for attorneys and fuglemen, 
to shift public burdens from superfluous hoards, and to load down the poor 
man's cup of coffee and spoonful of sugar, his clothing, the tools with which he 
works, or whatever else they can thus indirectly tax, without his knowing much 
about it. 

Then, again, our country has many ingenious citizens who insist on developing 
all sorts of " home manufactures," whether coherent with home resources or not, 
if only they can obtain monopolies which will turn their enterprise into large 
fortunes. This energetic class is willing to pay for considerable noise in favor of 
"protection for the American workingman," and to take the cost of the noise 
out of the workingman's wages. But, as such schemes do sometimes, for the 
moment, benefit some one class of toilers, tho' always at the expense of twenty 
other classes, who are peeled and scalped without seeing the process, the 
dextrous cheat has long been successful. 

In the duties on imports, and the direct and indirect increase in the cost of 
living thereby ; in the high price at home of all exports, — high for the very rea- 
son that, though plenty, they are pushed out of the country, duty free, to go 
where they are scarce and clear ; in the forcing of activity into abnormal pur- 
suits, thus cutting the natural productions of labor largely away ; — in these items 
the tariff of the United States annually plunders the people of not less, certainly, 
than fifteen hundred millions of dollars, and probably two thousand millions 
would be nearer the exasperating truth. But the least amount is thirty dollars a 
year, for. every man, woman and child in the land. 

A " rational tariff " is a thing not to be desired by a combined oligarchy of 
monopolists and tax-dodgers ; but Mr. David Reeves Smith has sufficient reason 
for considering it one of the paramount features of an actual democracy. 

The "Natural Rent" of a country, collected and redistributed for the benefit 
of the people owning that country; a system of " Just Money," effecting untram- 
meled exchange of all commodities on the basis of their value in labor ; a 
"Rational Tariff," making the most of a country's products, not for the few 
against the many, but for all the proprietors of the heritage ; these three things 
would consummate the principle of man's birth-right to matter, — would place 
the holding of wealth upon the institutes of absolute morality and justice. But 
that this consummation can be attained, — that this birth-right can be practically 
established, — the author of the present work considers impossible, except 
through the direct assumption by the people of their complete sovereignty, by 
means of what he terms " Perpetual Elections." 

Under the system of elections now existing, say, in our own nominal republic, 
the United States, almost anything can be done except to get a true and full 
expression of the people's will. Ordinarily, two opposing parties, manipulated 
by professional politicians, and trumpeted each by its attorneys of the partizan 
press, throw a few immediate superficial issues into a platform, on which they 
set up, for various offices, what are supposed to be their most available leaders at 
the moment. But the candidates must be sure to be not so much respected by 
the people that they cannot be strictly controlled and used by their party, — the 



Introduction. xiii 

politicians, that is, who deal out the nominations, always with this understand- 
ing. The consequence is that a lot of second-rate, if not little men, fill public 
positions, and "run" the government. We have exceptions, of course, to the 
rule. Three or four of our earliest Presidents were the most towering individuals 
the nation produced. But from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln, the 
White House at Washiagton was a sarcophagus for mummies, in front of which 
stood some strong living citizen who pretty nearly hid the thing from view. 
Since Lincoln we have had one great man, (as a soldier), at the head of affairs, 
who honestly insisted on establishing the immediate purposes of the war. But 
if a Thaddeus Stevens, a Charles Sumner, or perhaps even a Horace Greeley, 
could have succeeded to Grant's first term, we might have avoided the complete 
inversion of rectitude and statesmanship, which cursed the land with a Hugh 
MeCulloch, a John Sherman, enforced tramps and unnecessary beggary. If the 
whole people of America, instead of the few monied oligarchs, ever really come 
into possession of the government, they will pension so glorious a servant as. 
General Grant, sufficiently at least to keep him in respectable company, and out 
of the toils of gilded vermin, like Jay Gould. 

Not merely individuals, however, but political parties as a whole, — notoriously 
the two chief political parties of this country, — have been yirtually reduced to 
property. They belong to the banks, the railroads, and the great commercial 
monopolies. Their two functions are to serve these masters and to cheat the 
people into following the example. 

And what are proposed as remedies for this disease, —almost cancer, — in the 
body-politic ? Certain dapper gentlemen offer a reform of the civil service, — 
" culture " in office, and then tenures during good behavior. Others would patch 
up the tariff a little more ; and others would change protection for free-trade. 
Mr. Roscoe Conkling, would have a third term of Grant, and extend the blessings 
of Wall Street commerce into Mexico : his cure is to feed the cancer with tiger- 
steaks and let it grow. In the meantime, General Butler, pictured as the worst 
of men by a parrot-press which covets the spoons he did not steal, seems to be 
the only politician in the land whose brain is so erect that he can dispense with a 
conscience, and who w 7 ould really know how to serve the people with some effect 
if he could get a chance beyond the confines of" little Massachusetts and the 
ridiculous Greeks and Latins of Harvard College. 

But the remedy proposed by David Reeves Smith is radical. It applies to the 
moment, yet will stand the test of ages. It is doubtless very much like what 
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine would have suggested at the beginning 
of the republic, if steam and electricity had then taken down the barriers of 
space and time. It would do aw;iy with all question of party strife and corrup- 
tion, which Washington so bitterly deplored, by doing away with parties them- 
selves. It would return the sovereignty of this nation to its original source, the 
people, to be directly exercised by them whenever desirable. It would retire 
that clumsy and soiled implement of ungrown democracy, the secret ballot, sub- 
stituting the registered and duly certified will of every citizen, which he could 
express once a day, or but once in ten years, according to his pleasure. It would 
vest the people's general representation in a senate, composed of an adequate 
number of the best known and trusted citizens, not dependent on one locality for 
their constituents, but upon kindred minds in every part of the country. The 
president of this body would be the senator supported by the most votes, and he 
would be a sufficient president of the republic. He would step down whenever 



xiv Introduction. 

the people should transfer their support to some other senator, whom they might 
have reason to honor in his turn. 

Under such a system as this, what would result ? Mr. George William Curtis, 
with his civil service reform, would be sent to the Senate, if enough citizens in 
various parts of the nation considered his wisdom worth putting to the test. Mr. 
Roscoe Conkling, with his reverence for " bosses," might be tried again, if that 
doctrine could find any other following than his own. Butler would be there, 
of course, on general principles of vitality and endurance ; and Grant might be 
kept in the assemblage for life, if only to pay for his cigars, and in grateful mem- 
ory of the sword that saved the Union. But Henry George w T ould be a member, 
to represent the rights and the hopes of labor ; and every great movement in the 
progress of humanity would have its representative. 

In the same way, state interests would be expressed in state legislatures, and 
local interests in local councils. " The will of the people," says Mr. Smith him- 
self, in a sentence which illustrates the close mechanism of his mind, " is contin- 
ually changing ; and, to establish a true republic, a voting system is necessary by 
which the popular will and its changes can be ascertained and announced with a 
promptness and accuracy equal to that with which the thermometer indicates and 
announces the temperature of the atmosphere and the continuous changes to 
which it is subject." 

In connection with such a system of voting, any citizen could propose a law, 
by paying the cost of printing it, in a local, state or national election report, — 
thus offering any new idea for consideration and support. In this way " Perpet- 
ual Voting" would be joined with "Continuous Discussion," and the recorded 
abstracts of such discussion would formulate "The Conservation of Ideas." Based 
on a system of popular education, compulsory so far as to inform the coming 
citizen of his constitutional rights and duties under an actual republic, the whole 
edifice would be secure, while constantly modified to suit the growth of public 
intelligence and morality. 

But, to Mr. Smith's "Outline of the True Republic," all the dull men in the 
world will say, as usual : " A dream ! — a good idea, but it can't be realized." 
And all the rascals will say, tho' not aloud, " we don't want it realized ; give us, 
right away, some ready-made tool, with which we can steal a few more dollars 
ere we die." 

But, within the memory of those who are still young, millions of people, now 
American citizens, were bought and sold like hoes and fertilizers. Property _ 
included the soul. But Garrison had found the law of God on this subject, and 
evoked the voice of Phillips to utter it with the serene strength and majesty of 
the heavens themselves. It was enough. In one generation, these two men, 
with their handful of Abolitionists, sent John Brown to Harper's Ferry, Lincoln 
to Washington, and Grant into Richmond. If sages and heroes have not become 
extinct, the twentieth century will never reach its teens, before a further mandate 
of God, announced in this book, will at least begin to be impressed upon human 
law and social order. Should truth be too much impeded, and justice too long 
delayed, strife may come, and the sword be drawn again, with the terrors of 
modern chemistry added to its edge. But there should be no need of such folly. 
The right is best for all, — the rich and the poor alike. It will give to the chil- 
dren of Vanderbilt all that his grand children can in any event hope to hold, 
unless American civilization is to end in the dry-rot of Asia. It will give to the 
inheritor of daily toil, no more than enough to make him a safe, clean and intel- 
ligent citizen. It will hush all talk of "communism" and "socialism," by 



Introduction xv 

simply rendering unnecessary all schemes that are unnatural. We cannot all 
be just six feet high. The diversity of human nature is quite as pronounced as 
its unity, and any plan to level its inherent inequalities is wrong as well as 
ridiculous. After the justice and arithmetic of a true republic have been applied 
on the earth, bread will still be earned by the sweat of the brow, and not one 
spot in any garden will ever be a paradise for loafers. But he who works the 
hardest will not be shamelessly ground, by unnecessary social conditions, into a 
savage or a runt. Manhood will have opportunity to reach its full strength of 
mind and body, and womanhood will not be wasted by want, or bartered for 
shawls and shoes. Health will be possible ; calmness and temperance practica- 
ble ; truth and goodness attainable ; for abject, disconsolate, desperate poverty 
will no longer be the black slough of all imaginable curses. The epoch of man 
is at hand. The law and the gospel have been uttered which put him in rightful 
possession of his natural heritage and fortune. He will .not be the heretic to 
reject this gospel, not the coward and slave not to enforce this law. Let him 
hug to his heart the methods of conservatism and peace. But the eleventh 
commandment, which fulfils the other ten, is this : Hereafter thou shall make 
the price of security for the rich the comfort of the industrious poor. 

Troy, N. Y., July 24th, 1883. 



CHAPTER I. 

ETHICS. 



" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the sans." 

— Tennyson. 



Let us contemplate the universe as wholly made up of the 
conscious and of the unconscious, including in the conscious 
every being which can itself know enjoyment or suffering, 
pain or pleasure. 

A dead universe without the possibility of life, the rolling 
spheres, time, space, matter and motion, would exist without 
purpose or object in the absence or non-existence of the con- 
scious element. 

The fact of consciousness implies the existence in conscious 
beings of desires and wants, or at least wants, the satisfaction 
or supply of which tends to promote their well being or 
happiness. 

Consciousness of one's own welfare, — the consciousness 
that our desires are satisfied and wants supplied, — constitutes 
happiness, — the most complete and perfect welfare, the 
highest and greatest kind of good to the one concerned for 
the time being, and to the extent involved. 

Each conscious being, inasmuch as it seeks its own welfare, 
is engaged in the pursuit of its own happiness. To the full 
extent to which this pursuit or seeking of each is consistent 
with or involves the welfare of all, conscious beings have a 
common purpose, and pursue the same definite object ; name- 
ly the general welfare. 

The conscious element in the universe existing only for its 
own welfare, the unconscious element being necessary to the 
existence and welfare of the conscious, and having no purpose 
of its own other than the welfare of the conscious, it is evi- 
dent that the sole object of being is happiness, and that the 



10 Ethics. 

sole object of the universe is the welfare of conscious 
beings. 

In society, if an individual endeavors to secure for himself 
anything to which the interests of others are opposed, he 
must encounter and overcome the opposing efforts of such 
others; but, if he seeks for himself only that which will benefit 
others as well as himself, such others will, if they act 
understandingly, co-operate with and aid him ; and, if he, as 
a member of an intelligent and well-organized society, wisely 
harmonizes his own interests with the general interests, and 
engages only in such enterprises as will promote the general 
welfare, he will receive the approval and co-operation of 
society. Intelligence, education, and sound political institu- 
tions, tend to make individual interests harmonize, and to 
coerce all individuals into seeking their own good through 
efforts to promote the general welfare, or in a manner that will 
not injure others, or conflict with the general interests. 

Good and evil are ends, results, or effects. 

Right and wrong are means, actions, or causes. 

The general welfare is not only the final object, the highest 
good, but it involves and embraces every good thing. The 
happiness or welfare of any individual is good, not only in 
relation to that individual, but inasmuch as it is so much 
good added to the mass or aggregate of good constituting 
the general welfare. 

All good is an increment of the general welfare, notwith- 
standing that if the happiness or good of any individual is 
obtained at the expense of others, the loss to others is an evil 
which must be set against the good. Every good increases 
and every evil decreases the general welfare. 

Any means or actions are incidentally right or wrong, 
or both right and w T rong, in truth and in fact, exactly accord- 
ing to the several resulting good or evil effects considered by 
themselves severally; but are on the w^hole right or wrong 
exactly according to their net effect in augmenting or dim- 
inishing the general welfare ; that is, right produces or results 
in more of good than of evil, and wrong produces or results 
in more of evil than of good. 

Very rarely will anything be found to be wholly right or 
completely wrong. Almost every act is both right and wrong, 



Ethics. 11 

because nearly every act results in, causes, or produces, both 
good and evil. 

While men are endowed with a degree of intelligence 
which, if properly directed, will enable them' perfectly to 
comprehend the true or real nature of right and wrong, and 
good and evil, in a general way or in the abstract, yet in the 
concrete, in the complexities of every- day life, questions of 
right and wrong are so involved, human knowledge so lim- 
ited, and human judgment so uncultivated, that it is simply 
impossible for any man always to recognize the right, because 
he can never know to a certainty what the final or the net 
effect of anything on the general welfare will be. The duty 
of man is, first and always, to endeavor diligently to increase 
his knowledge of right and wrong ; modestly and respectfully 
to consider the earnest convictions of others ; and finally 
and always to act for the right as he understands it, or in a 
manner consistent with his convictions. 

Crime or sin, from an exclusively moral standpoint, consists 
in doing what we believe or know to be wrong. For the 
government of well instructed individual men, only that is 
morally right which, after due consideration, the individual 
believes will, on the whole, or as a net result, promote the 
general welfare. 

As I use the term, moral, a man who always acts con- 
scientiously is a perfectly moral man ; but a man's conscience, 
or moral sense, is the creature of education, of social customs 
and influences, and of the bias or inclination of the man's 
own thoughts. If he once recognizes the abstract nature of 
right and wrong, truth and error, and becomes convinced 
that his duty is diligently to seek truth and attempt the 
right, and he habitually acts upon that conviction, his 
conscience or moral sense will be continuously corrected 
or justified, and his morality will be correspondingly im- 
proved thereby. 

Whatever is right is right from the very nature of things: 
— is naturally right, constitutes a natural right. A legal right 
when it legalizes a wrong, or any other thing not naturally 
right, or a natural right, is no right, cannot be right, but on 
the contrary is, and must necessarily be, wrong, or a wrong, 
and naturally wrong, or a natural wrong. 



12 Ethics. 

Inasmuch as the welfare of conscious beings depends 
upon the satisfaction of desires or wants, anything which 
satisfies a desire or supplies a want is, in its immediate rela- 
tion to that desire or want, an unmixed good, because in 
that relation, in that exclusive view, it adds to the general 
welfare that increment of happiness or pleasure. The fact 
that, on the whole, the general or individual welfare is de- 
creased, and that therefore, on the whole, the thing is an evi], 
does not alter the immediate incidental fact. 

Utility is that which satisfies a desire or supplies a want. 

By the use of the term, utility, we avoid the necessity of 
using the term, good, in its most confusing relations. 

Utility is the immediate or incidental good which may 
result from means or actions on the whole wrong. Utility is 
an immediate good which may prove to be either good or evil 
in its more extended relation. Utility is any good contem- 
plated independently of any accompanying, or resultant, or 
related evil. Utility is any good whatever. 

Usefulness is that which tends to promote utility, — the 
means of which utility is the end, or satisfactory result. 



CHAPTER II. 

OWNERSHIP. 

The unconscious elements of the universe exist solely 
and exclusively for the use and benefit of the conscious. 

This natural, necessary and indisputable relation, — the 
natural right of the conscious to use or to utilize the uncon- 
scious, — is the relation of ownership. 

The unconscious element of the universe is wealth, of which 
the conscious element is the owner. Wealth, having an owner, 
is property— the property of the owner. The unconscious, 
in whatever form or mode, all of it, each and every part of 
it, is the property of the conscious. 

The origin of existence, the beginning of being, conscious 
or unconscious, the pre-existence or co-existence of a creator, 
are questions which have no bearing whatever upon the 
matters we are investigating. 

The Christian, who believes that the God of Isaac and of 
Jacob created both the conscious and the unconscious, does 
and must believe that the unconscious was created solely and 
exclusively for the use and benefit of the conscious ; and the 
skeptic or pagan, though incredulous as to the origin or be- 
ginning, can not dispute the existing fact. 

If all things exist for the glory of God, God is most glorified 
when the right prevails. The laws of right are legibly and 
indelibly inscribed in words of truth on the face of facts. 
He who honestly, earnestly and energetically seeks, may find 
the facts, and read the laws. The object of religion is to aid 
men in that seeking and reading, and the shadow of bigotry 
should not be allowed to fall upon and conceal from view 
the objects which religion would point out. Why should a 
Jew refuse to accept a truth offered by a gentile, because 
the gentile refuses to be circumcised? Why should a Chris- 
tian, while offering a heretic the key to heaven, refuse to 
receive from that heretic anything which is good both to give 
and to receive % Let us be ready to accept the truth from 



14 Ownership. 

whatever source it comes ; let us agree whenever agreement 
is possible, and it will soon appear that our disputed points 
are not so numerous, so important, or so irreconcilable, as 
has been supposed. 

The immense common estate of the conscious, consisting of 
the whole of the unconscious part of the universe, has been 
divided up and distributed throughout the immensity of 
space. Innumerable planetary systems, like groups of 
islands in a boundless ocean, are so far separated from each 
other that communication seems to be impossible, even be- 
tween planets warmed by the same sun. Now, even if the 
inhabitants of each planet should recognize the fact that all 
planets are but parts of a common estate, the impossibility of 
communication, and the fact that whatever was done on 
one planet could not in any known manner affect the welfare 
of the inhabitants of any other planet, would justify the 
inhabitants of each to consider the one inhabited by them to 
have been alio ted to them for their own exclusive use and 
benefit ; or, being in possession under such circumstances, 
they would be justified in considering themselves the owners. 
The right to use or utilize anything is ownership. 

The inhabitants of earth, the conscious, own the earth, 
and own every unconscious thing in or around it which can 
be used or utilized by the conscious. 

The common ownership, by all the conscious, of all the 
unconscious, necessarily existing in the nature of things, is 
an indefeasible, inalienable natural right, irrevocable and 
unchangeable while the conscious and the unconscious con- 
tinue to co-exist. 

It being impossible for all common property to be used in 
common, distribution becomes necessary, and therefore right; 
and individuals thereby acquiring the right to use and utilize 
the parts alloted to them, become the owners of such parts ; 
and thus individual ownership is established without in the 
least imparing or invalidating the pre-existing and co-exist- 
ing common ownership. All things at any time owned by 
individuals as private property are, and necessarily must be, 
at the same time common property. 

Property is anything owned, and therefore may include 
any and every thing which can be used or utilized ; that 
is, all wealth. 



CHAPTER III. 

•JUSTICE AND EQUALITY. 

Whether a superior conscious being, as man, can own an 
inferior conscious being, as a horse, is a question of justice. 

Justice is the rendering to every conscious being its rights. 

Manufacturers make or produce innumerable articles, vary- 
ing in value from one cent, or less, to many thousands of 
dollars. The manufacturer desires the welfare, so to speak, 
of each and every one of the articles he manufactures. He 
expends thought and care and money on each of them in pro- 
protion to his estimate of their value to him. He cares exactly 
ten times as much for an article which he values at ten dol- 
lars as he does for a one- dollar article ; and, if compelled to 
choose between the sacrifice or loss of one one-thousand-dollar 
watch and nine hundred, and ninety-nine one-dollar watches, 
he would instantty and as a matter of course decide in favor 
of retaining the former. Conscious beings vary in relative 
importance, as from an oyster to a man, or from a gnat to an 
eagle, exactly as manufactured articles vary in value ; and it 
is certain that, in strict accordance with their importance, 
justice demands for each its measure of consideration. A 
woman was seen chasing a dog through the street, screaming 
that the dog had swallowed a twenty-dollar bill. An obliging 
butcher caught the dog, killed it and recovered the money. 
What man can tell to a certainty whether strict justice would 
not have demanded the sacrifice of the bill rather than 
of the dog % Still the relative importance of conscious beings, 
if known, could be stated in numbers, and all questions of 
justice decided mathematically, just as the manufacturer 
disposes of his goods according to their value. 

Conscious beings have a natural right to life, liberty and 
happiness, in direct and exact proportion to their relative 



16 Justice and Equality. 

importance. Man is so much superior to, ( more important 
than ), all other inhabitants of earth, that these others are, 
when compared one by one with man, evidently entitled to 
very much less consideration than man himself, and can just- 
ly be made tributary to his welfare in proportion to their 
relative inferiority ; that is, man has the right to use inferior 
animals, and consider them a part of his wealth, to the ex- 
tent that their welfare may be rightfully considered subordi- 
nate to his. But, inasmuch as animals have rights which 
man is bound to respect, they are both wealth and not- wealth; 
they are both wealth and the owners of wealth ; they are at 
the same time a' part of the wealth of mankind, associates of 
man in the ownership of wealth, and natural dependents of 
mankind. Justice demands that men, in treating animals as 
property, should remember that animals are not property 
even when they are property. 

The power of man is so much superior to that of the lower 
animals that the latter are in a very great degree at his mercy. 
This fact makes man responsible for the welfare of the lower 
animals, and the natural administrator of the common estate. 
It should be understood and remembered that injustice to a 
dog is a wrong differing only in degree from injustice to a man. 

The importance of men, compared with each other, differs 
very greatly. While every act of some men excites admira- 
tion and respect, other men are undoubtedly inferior to some 
dogs in nobility of character ; but experience has proved that 
men can not be trusted to judge rightly of the comparative 
importance of their" fellow men, either as individuals or in 
classes ; and justice therefore demands that all men should, 
by society, be considered of equal importance in the sense in 
which I have used that term. All men should be guaranteed 
equal opportunities in the pursuit of happiness without re- 
gard to their individual capacity for improving such oppor- 
tunities, not because men are equal in fact, but because, for 
society to consider them unequal, and to attempt to measure 
or determine their inequalities, results practically in great 
injustice. 

Having asserted the rights of inferior conscious beings, it 
will frequently be convenient, in what follows, to ignore their 
existence, and to speak of mankind as if they were the sole 
inhabitants of the earth. 



Justice and Equality. 17 

Humanity, — collective man, — owns the earth. The first 
man, on his advent, took posession of it in the name of that 
owner ; but when, from the north and from the south, and 
from the mountain sides, the creeping lines of perpetual snow 
shall meet and efface each other, the white mantle of death 
will coverall that then remains on earth of humanity. The 
ownership of the earth by humanity will have been extin- 
guished by the death of that owner. At the death of an 
owner of distributed property, the ownership of his estate 
reverts, by an iaexorable law, to the superior owner, and is 
reabsorbed into the estate of that superior owner. Humanity 
is the owner of the earth because, being in undisputed posses- 
sion of that planet, humanity has the unquestionable right 
to use and utilize it ; but, at the same time, humanity is 
neither more nor less than a tenant for life, because humanity 
must die, and the superior ownership of the earth, more en- 
during, is vested in the whole conscious element of the 
universe. That this superior and this inferior ownership 
co-exist, and do not conflict with each other, is a matter of 
fact. 

Humanity,— collective man, — is made up of men, women, 
children, insane, infirm persons, etc. Adult men and women 
of sound mind must necessarily, in virtue of their natural 
powers and of their relations lo the mass of humanity, man- 
age the affairs of the whole, and are of course responsible 
for the welfare of those who depend upon them for justice. 

Men and women govern by virtue of their mental and 
physical powers. In the savage state each individual, man 
or woman, backs his cunning or his intellect by his physical 
powers, re-enforced or augmented by the use of arms. The 
chief men among savage people are those physically the 
stronger or the more skillful in the use of weapons. The first 
and most manifest requirement of an advanced civilization is 
the entire abolition of such political distinctions between 
adults as are based upon individual strength or skill in the 
use of offensive weapons. 

The power of individuals to coerce or defy others must be 
made to depend upon something other than the use of fist, 
club or tire- arms. The strength of the most physically power- 
ful must avail nothing for unjust, individual or selfish pur- 
poses against the most delicate, or^physically weak. 



18 Justice and Equality. 

I will call every man or woman of sound mind a citizen, 
and speak of citizens collectively, or as a collective entity, as 
the people,— the people of the world, — the people of the 
state, etc., — ignoring sometimes, to save words, the existence 
of inferiors and dependents. 

The people is an entity, made up of all individual citizens, 
which citizens individually should be made by law arbitrarily 
and practically equal in physical power by the .substituting 
of other than physical force for the settlement of conflicting 
interests or desires. In a true republic, the vote of each 
citizen would be the perfect substitute for such physical 
force. 

All citizens, in the eye of the law, should be considered as 
having a natural right to equal opportunities in the pursuit 
of happiness ; and while t considered as of unequal mental 
powers and of unequal capacity to improve or profit by equal 
opportunities, such inequalities should not be determined 
by law, but be left free to produce their natural and necessary, 
and therefore rightful results. 

In the eye of the law, (the will of the people), citizens should 
be equal, — the law should make no distinctions, recognize no 
inequality, but should recognize and accept the necessarily 
unequal results to individual citizens of the political equality 
of all citizens. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE COMMON ESTATE. 

We have seen that the world is a common estate, owned 
by all the conscious beings which inhabit it, and administered 
by the people. We have defined ownership as the right to 
use or utilize anything ; but a right can only exist when its 
existence or exercise promotes the general welfare. The 
general welfare requires a distribution of all wealth among 
individuals in such a manner as will best promote that wel- 
fare ; therefore ownership carries with it the obligation to 
assign, transfer, or distribute the wealth owned, in such man- 
ner as the general welfare may demand. The individual owner 
of private property can only own it on the condition that he 
makes. a better use of it than any other owner would make ; 
or, practically, in the affairs of men, every owner of private 
property, to be considered the rightful owner, should be sup- 
posed to use his property in a manner best calculated to 
promote the general welfare, — notably by increasing the 
desirability of wealth, as by converting clay into bricks or 
by converting any pre-existing form of matter or motion in- 
to more desirable forms, thereby producing machinery, books, 
music, food, clothing, shelter, etc., etc. 

The right to hold wealth, and use it productively, or to 
hold it at all, thereby preventing it from being used by others, 
is the right of all citizens equally, and becomes an individual 
right, or the exclusive right of an individual, only by con- 
sent of the people and for the common benefit, and as a cer- 
tificate of purchasing-power, or evidence of debt due by the 
people to the individual. 

The individual who by his labor increases the desirability 
of wealth, — that is, the individual who improves the property 



20 The Common Estate. 

of the people, as by converting clay into bricks, acquires 
thereby a natural right to consume, or use destructively, as 
many units of desirability as he has produced. The value of 
any article produced from materials which in their original 
form had no value, is an index or measure of the desirability 
of that article ; therefore the individual who makes valuable 
bricks out of valuless clay earns the right to consume, or use 
destructively, wealth in some form equal in value to the 
bricks produced. The bricks, (improved clay), are as much 
the property of the people, after he made them, as was the 
original clay ; but inasmuch as their value is the value he 
has created, they constitute a perfect measure of the value of 
his services to the people in creating them. The people own 
the bricks, but owe him for making them. The bricks, while 
held by him, are the unmistakable evidence of that debt. 
The bricks, belonging to the people, all citizens have an equal 
right to hold them ; and, being the common property of all 
citizens, any citizen who holds them for his own purposes, 
must render an equivalent to the people for their,, use, — that 
is, must pay a rent, or tax, or hire, as an equivalent for that 
use. The individual right is a right to purchasing-power, or 
the right to consume as much as he has produced. If he has 
no use for the bricks, and does not wish to pay a tax on his 
purchasing-power, let him sell the bricks to somebody, who 
does want to use them, at their market value in money, which 
should not be taxed, and which should be simply a certificate 
of the debt due him. But money, to be rightfully exempt from 
taxation, must be made of nearly or quite valueless material, 
like paper ; for if a valueable material, like gold, is used for 
money, and is not taxed, the wealth, (gold,) thus uselessly 
employed, would be a dead loss to the people, and of noser- 
vice to the individual, further than as an evidence of debt ; 
and furthermore, the supply of gold, being capricious and 
uncertain, the value of gold must necessarily fluctuate, and 
with it the purchasing-power its ownership confers. 

The natural right to purchasing-power, or the right of 
individuals to consume or to use wealth destructively, is 
acquired by citizens as an equivalent for services rendered to 
the people. The wealth of the country should be distributed 
among individuals by valuation, conferring purchasing-power 
on each in proportion to his natural right to it. All such 



The Common Estate. 21 

ownership, except the ownership of money, should be taxed, 
or made to pay rent to the people. 

To explain the foregoing statements relating to the distri- 
bution of the wealth of the world, is one of the principal 
objects of this work. 

Common ownership is superior to private ownership ; and 
when the general welfare demands that any individual be 
compelled to exchange the private ownership of any one kind 
of property for that of some other kind of equal value to him, 
or for equivalent benefits in any form, the individual must 
and of right should submit to the exchange, and is not in any 
degree wronged thereby. 

Ownership is a right which can exist only in accordance 
with all other rights, and specifically subject to just laws of 
distribution and exchange. Neither the rich nor the poor 
have any right to complain of any distribution or redistribu- 
tion of wealth demanded by the general welfare, provided 
that no one is unjustly deprived of income. 

While, for convenience, we may speak of humanity as 
collectively owning the earth, or of a people as exclusively 
owning a country, yet we should always bear in mind that, 
in doing so, we ignore the rights of inferior beings and 
dependents. 

All the wealth of the world is common property, of which 
all conscious beings in the world are joint or common owners. 
The joint ownership, being indefeasible, entitles each owner, 
under any given circumstances, and at any given time, to 
the use, (private ownership ), of a certain definite propor- 
tional part of all property of every kind ; or, as an equivalent 
for, or representative of, that proportional part of all kinds 
of property, to the private ownership of some particular part 
of one or more kinds ; or, as an equivalent for such private 
ownership, to utility or benefits fully equal to, or in excess 
of, what would be derived from such private ownership. 

Partly from necessity, and partly by common consent, the 
earth's surface is portioned off among the several nations 
which occupy it. How far this distribution is just and equi- 
table, I shall not at present inquire. Assuming that it is 
just, the ownership of each country by its inhabitants is a 
matter of course. Ignoring the existence of any thing but 
citizens, the several citizens of a country are the equal and 



22 The Common Estate. 

common, or joint owners, of all the wealth in that country. 
No citizen is necessarily the private individual owner of any 
particular part of that wealth, but is necessarily part owner 
of the whole of it. The distribution of that common estate 
should be such that the best use will be made of it ; that is 
to say, such distribution should be made as would best pro- 
mote the general welfare, without the violation of individual 
rights. When any kind of wealth exists in superabundance, 
every citizen, under all circumstances, has the right to help 
himself, and become the individual or private owner of all he 
can use or utilize of it. because no other method of distribution 
of such wealth could so well promote the general welfare. 
When any kind of desirable wealth is scarce, its ownership 
becomes valuable, and its value to the owner, under normal 
conditions, exactly measures his desire to retain the owner- 
ship of it. The equal ownership of the common estate implies 
that the equal undivided parts so owned are, under ordinary 
circumstances, equal in value. For example, if, in a country 
which contains 1,000,000 citizens, the value of all property is 
$10,000,000,000, then, each citizen of that country is necessari- 
ly, and of natural right, the owner of an undivided part, of 
the value of $10,000. This does not imply, however, the in- 
dividual private ownership of any particular thing, but it 
does imply an equivalent for the ownership of a quantity of 
wealth represented by $10,000 ; it means that, in that country, 
the laws and institutions should provide that wealth should 
be so distributed and held that every citizen should have, as 
an equivalent for his ten-thousand-dollar interest in the 
common estate, opportunities for profitable employment 
according to his ability and industry. For all such oppor- 
tunities proceed alone and necessarily from the use of the 
wealth of a country. 

All property may be rightfully distributed among a part of 
the people to the exclusion of another part only on the ground 
that all are benefited by such unequal distribution and exclu- 
sion. Eyery citizen, because he is an equal owner of all 
wealth, is interested in having wealth produced as cheaply 
as possible. The price of production is consumption. Pri- 
vate ownership carries with it the right to consume the wealth 
owned. The total of wealth consumed is the price paid by 
the people for the total of wealth produced. The excess of 



The Common Estate. 23 

production over consumption is the gain or profit made by the 
people ; is the natural rent due to the people ; and whoever 
consumes as much as, or more than he produces, is not will- 
ing to, or cannot, under the circumstances, produce as cheap- 
ly as others. 

If he consumes more than he produces, it will not be for 
long, for he will soon find himself, or should soon find him- 
self, without assets, and in a condition in which . it will be 
necessary for him to measure his consumption by his produc- 
tion ; but, even then, he would still be entitled to opportuni- 
ties as good as the general welfare would permit, or the general 
interests allow, or equal rights demand ; and perhaps to 
opportunities as good as or better than he would have if his 
equal share of all wealth were then given to him with the un- 
derstanding that thereafter society would owe him nothing. 

Any existing or proposed distribution of wealth, to be 
right, must be better for any one citizen than if equal 
distibution should be made and that one citizen thereafter 
be left to shift for himself. 

The widow mentioned in the following item from the New 
York Herald probably thinks that an equal distribution of 
existing wealth would be very much better for a very large 
part of the people than is the present distribution in the 
United States. If she is right, then the present distribution 
cannot be right, 

"SHIRTS AT FORTY-FIVE CENTS A DOZEN. 

A widow, who feared that the wholesalers for whom she works might take her 
work from her if the Herald should publish her name, visited the Herald 
office yesterday and exhibited some shirts for making which her two daughters 
are paid forty-five cents a dozen. ' We got along,' she said, ' and paid our 
rent until my youngest boy was hurt and lost his situation, but since that time 
we have not beea able to pay our rent and have had to move from place to place. 
My oldest boy sends us what money he can spare, but our main dependence is 
upon the twenty-three cents a day that we get for half a dozen shirts. We live 
about four miles from Fulton ferry, and my youngest boy walks to the ferry and 
crosses in the one cent hours to get the work from the New York dealers, and 
the next day, with half a dozen shirts in his arms, he goes to New York and gets 
the money. I am no longer able to work the sewing machine that we have hired, 
and it is breaking my daughters down. My youngest son, who is nineteen years 
of age, has tried in vain to get work, and we have all tried for months past, but 
unsuccessfully, to''get money enough to take us back to the place we dwelt in 
four years ago.' The widow's husband died seventeen years ago, leaving what 
was estimated co*be a handsome fortune ;^but the lawyers, she says, took every 
dollar of it long'ago." 



24 The Common Estate. 

The much-vaunted equal opportunities at present enjoyed 
by honest American citizens are really in their nature like the 
chances in a fraudulent grand-lottery scheme, where all the 
prizes are drawn by an unjustly favored few. Justice de- 
mands that, in the distribution of wealth, as little as possible 
be left to chance, and that every citizen shall be enabled to 
acquire exactly in pioportion to his efforts, intelligence and 
virtues. The foregoing facts published by the New York 
Herald are sufficient, without doubt, to condemn unquali- 
fiedly our boasted civilization. No test could be more 
ample, conclusive and indisputable. 

Practically, and in fact, the natural rent, or gain, or profit, 
or annual value to the people of all the wealth of a 
country, is approximately two per cent, of its market value. 
If the average per citizen, is ten-thousand dollars-worth, 
then every citizen, whether poor or rich, is entitled to receive, 
in money or in something better to him than his money 
would be, two hundred dollars every year, as his share of 
the natural rent of all wealth. This fact will more clearly 
appear as we proceed. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PEOPLE AND THE KING. 

The government of a state is agent and representative of 
the people, and transacts for and in the name of the people 
the business of the people. The government mnst pay what 
the people owe, and must collect what is due to the people. 
In the matter of receipts and expenditures, which we will 
consider as consisting of money received and paid out, the 
government should proceed, as far as possible, on the same 
lines that individuals or business associates do ; that is accor- 
ding to contracts expressed or implied. There is an implied 
contract between the government and each individual citizen. 
The laws at'any time in force determine what the contract in 
every case is. 

The laws indicate in what ways, and on what terms, pri- 
vate property may be acquired and held, and they inciden- 
tally provide for supplying the public treasury with money. 
The laws should, if possible, anticipate every ordinary and 
extraordinary requirement or the treasury, and provide in 
advance for the same, so that every citizen may know under 
what circumstances he may or may not be called upon to 
contribute towards keeping a supply of money in the public 
treasury, and to what extent. 

The government income being amply provided for in this 
manner, the government should then proceed, as any citizen 
would, to collect that which becomes legally due to the peo- 
ple, and to make its disbursements in accordance with the 
obligations of the people. 

Remembering that every law should be simply a definition 
of right, it is evident that when just laws are established, every 



26 The People and the King. 

thing will have been done to regulate justly the receipts and 
expenditures of government. 

Let us try to find out what would be right in the matter. 
Evidently the law should first provide for replenishing the 
treasury, by collecting into it such moneys as the people 
have the natural right to collect, in normal times, and under 
the ordinary circumstances of every-day life. Let us call 
such receipts ordinary revenue. 

The law should also define just methods for obtaining 
money in case of extraordinary or irregular demands on the 
treasury, on account of war, pestilence, flood, famine or other 
fortuitous circumstances. Let us call the money obtained 
by government under abnormal circumstances, extraordinary 
revenue. 

The people are the owner of all wealth, but the government 
can use to advantage only a comparatively small proportion 
of the whole ; therefore the government should do exactly 
what any citizen would do under the same circumstances ; 
namely, use what it can to advantage, and rent or let out the 
larger part. Now let us suppose that the present system of 
distribution could and should continue uninterruptedly for a 
few years more, until some one man had become the owner 
of all the wealth of the United States. Being the absolute 
owner of all [ wealth, he would be the absolute ruler of the 
people, and could impose any terms he pleased. 

Suppose that he should come to the conclusion to distri 
bute his wealth equally among citizens ; to give it away in 
fact, on the following conditions : 

1st. That he should be sovereign, and be called king ; and 
that the sovereignty should descend at his death to his near- 
est kinsman forever. 

2d. That, on the death of any citizen, his property should 
revert to the king. 

3d. That all taxes for ordinary revenue should be abolished, 
but that the king might resort to special taxation, or imposts, 
as an expedient for regulating foreign commerce, and for 
restricting the development of any industry which he might 
consider prejudicial to the general welfare. 

4th. That when extraordinary revenue should be required, 
it should be raised by an advalorem tax on assets. 



The People and the King. 27 

5th. That the cost of providing for the poor and dependent, 
and for maintaining the government, shonld be paid from the 
king's treasury. 

IS'ow let us suppose that the king and the people carry out 
this agreement in good faith ; that the king sells at public 
auction all the property which reverts to him at the death of 
private owners, and that he places the proceeds in his 
treasury; that he provides for himself and family more lib- 
erally than does any monarch in Europe ; that he carries on 
his government economically ; provides liberally for the 
poor and dependent ; and expends whatever surplus there 
may be at any time in the treasury in some manner that will 
appear to be better for every citizen than if the money were 
distributed equally among all citizens ; that he depends on 
laying and collecting an advalorem tax on all assets when 
extraordinary expenditures are demanded ; and that other- 
wise the laws relating to property and its exchanges remain 
about the same as they are now. 

It is evident that while this distribution of wealth which 
we have described should continue to be nearly equal among 
citizens, an advalorem tax on assets would be about the same 
thing in effect as a poll tax ; but very soon the wealth would 
concentrate in the hands of apart of the people, to the exclu- 
sion of the other part, and be distributed among the former 
in proportion to their money-getting and money saving qual- 
ties ; and then the taxes would fall exclusively upon this 
class. 

The ordinary revenue of the king would be derived from 
the sale of property left by the private owners at death, and 
this method of obtaining a revenue would soon be found to 
be objectionable, not from its amount, but because it would 
.deprive citizens, by cutting off their natural heirs, of a pow- 
erful motive for industry and economy, and also because it 
would not be pleasant to have an officer of the king waiting 
for the death of every citizen to claim what would be left by 
him for the king. Now, in view of this objection, let us 
suppose that it were agreed between the king and people, for 
their mutual benefit, to commute the king's right, as sole 
inheritor of estates, to an annual tax to be paid to him by 
the living. In this case, it would be found that the king's 
revenues from inheritances every year would be exactly equal 



28 , The People and the King. 

to a certain per cent, of the value of all assets, which per 
cent, would be equal to the death-rate. If it were found that 
two per cent, of all citizens died every year, then the revenue 
of the king would be two per cent, per annum of the value of 
all property. This fact having been ascertained and recog- 
nized by the king and people, Jet it be supposed that the 
king agreed to accept in exchange for his right of inheritance 
an annual advalorem tax of two per cent, on all assets. It is 
evident that the new arrangement would prove mutually 
satisfactory, because a new stimulant would be given to in- 
dustry and economy, and the quantity of wealth would be 
thereby increased, and individual citizens would, besides 
feeling and enjoying a greater power to consume, have the 
satisfaction of knowing that those nearest and dearest to 
them would enjoy the fruits of their thrift if they themselves 
did not. 

After the affairs of the people had become adjusted to the 
new order of things, the following features would be prominent: 

The ordinary revenues of the king would be derived exclu- 
sively from the two per cent, annual advalorem tax, and his 
extraordinary revenues, from an aditional advalorem tax 
sufficient to meet the emergency. The owners of property, 
being compelled to employ it actively, would compete with 
each other for the services of those who work for wages, and 
wages would consequently rise beyond any point ever before 
reached ; and, from the same active employment of wealth, 
the aggregate production would be very much greater than 
ever before. The wage- worker, being well paid, would con- 
sume in proportion to his means, and thus furnish a home 
market such as the world had never before heard of ; the 
treasury-surplus being expended by the king in the manner 
described, would still further stimulate production and raise 
wages, and perhaps double the direct good effects of the tax ; 
and, all the while, the king and his family would be consum- 
ing more than does any monarch and royal family of Europe. 

Certainly if one man where the absolute owner of all the 
wealth of the world, he could not possibly do better for him- 
self with it than to give it all away on the conditions above 
specified ; and it is my purpose in this work to show that 
the people, who are the owner of all wealth, should dispose of 
it in a manner substantially the same. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS. 

Government should not engage in business of any kind 
unless it can do so in a better manner and at less cost than 
the same business would be done by private enterprise, and 
should never engage in business for the purpose of increasing 
its revenues, unless the increase be incidental to the enterprise. 
If it appears that, for any reason whatever, the government 
can carry the mails,- or raise potatoes, more cheaply and in a 
more satisfactory manner than it can be done by individuals 
or private enterprise, the government should do the business ; 
otherwise it should not. But, if it does the business, it should 
so regulate the rates of postage, or the price of potatoes, that 
the business would sustain itself, but not add to the revenue ; 
because, if the government charges more than just enough 
to cover all expenses, those who send letters, or consume 
potatoes, are unjustly taxed for the benefit of others ; and, 
if on the contrary, the government charges are too low, the 
people are unjustly made to give a bonus, or premium, to 
those who send letters or consume potatoes. 

if the object of reducing the rates of postage is to encour- 
age the circulation of literature, or the writing of letters, as 
a matter well calculated to benefit the whole people, then the 
measure is justifiable as an expedient for promoting the 
general welfare ; but I can think of nothing that would justify 
increasing the rates of postage beyond what is required to 
make the business self-sustaining. A tax on whiskey and 
tobacco. is justifiable, if necessary or convenient, as an expe- 
dient for protecting the people against the social evils result- 
ing from the unrestricted production and use of those articles; 



£0 GOVEKNMENT AND BUSINESS. 

but is unjustifiable if imposed for the purpose of raising a 
revenue, for the same reasons that a revenne for carrying the 
mails or raising potatoes is unjustifiable. A bonus paid by 
the government for the encouragement of any industry what- 
ever is justifiable to the extent that the general welfare is 
promoted thereby, it being understood that to promote the 
general welfare implies not only that the people are benefited 
as a whole more than they are injured, but also that the 
natural rights of individuals are not invaded. Anything 
which increases the general abundance of suitable food, cloth- 
ing and houses promotes the general welfare, and any 
possible surplus revenue can be expended for the nearly 
equal benefit of all citizens in promoting the production of 
an abundance of these three essentials to well-being. Gov- 
ernment should depend for its ordinary revenue on the death- 
rate tax, approximately two per cent, per annum on all assets; 
and should rigorously collect that tax, as being the natural 
rent due the people by citizens for the use of the wealth held 
or owned by each ; and should judiciously expend all sur- 
plus over and above regular expenses in -promoting the pro- 
duction of an abundance of suitable food, clothing and 
shelter. When extraordinary revenues are required, they 
should be obtained by increasing the rate per cent, of the adva- 
lorem tax on assets sufficiently to meet the emergency. — 
Whether or not government bonds should be issued and sold, 
or the government credit in any manner extended to relieve 
property-holders from sudden and unexpected increase of 
the rate of taxation, is a matter of public policy in which the 
general welfare is to be considered in preference to the con- 
venience of the individual holders of the wealth of the people. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RENT AND REVENUE. 

Let us class the conscious beings of any nation as, first, 
citizens, and second, dependents. 

The class, citizens, includes all adults of sound mind, male 
or female, who, if legally guaranteed their natural rights, 
either as employer or employed, or as employing themselves, 
would be able to produce, through life, as much as they have 
a natural right to consume. All others are dependents. 

1 The equality of citizens has in general terms been already 
discussed. Practically, every adult, sound in body and mind, 
is a citizen. 

Citizens collectively constitute the people. 

In the class, dependents, are included all persons not 
citizens, and all the lower animals, or conscious beings which, 
in the very nature of things, are in some degree dependent 
on citizens. 

Let us ignore foreigners and foreign countries, for the 
present. 

To provide for dependents is a common obligation, or an 
obligation which devolves upon the people as a whole ; and 
any expense connected therewith should be paid out of the 
common purse, or public treasury, and constitute a part of 
the regular expenses of the government. The education of 
the young, and the care of the aged and infirm, are of course 
incidental parts of the provision to be made for dependents. 
Inasmuch as the public treasury is supplied by advalorem 
taxes on assets, every citizen contributes to the support of 
dependents exactly in proportion to his ability to do so, and 
a paradox is thereby presented for investigation ; namely, 
that a common obligation is paid out of the common purse, 
as strictly an equal contribution, while yet the common purse 
is supplied by citizens, not equally, but according to the 



82 Rent and Revenue. 

ability of each to contribute. But the paradox disappears 
when we reflect that the common and equal obligation 
of citizens to provide for dependents, or contribute to the 
general welfare, can justly be neither more nor less than the 
obligation of each to contribute according to his ability. All 
extraordinary expenses, arising from public misfortunes, as 
war, pestilence, flood or famine, are not of the same nature as 
that required for dependents, and constitute a class of expen- 
ses radically different from those incurred in normal times 
to better the condition of citizens generally and equally. — 
One part of the advalorem tax is to provide for the former 
class of expenses, on the ground, that a common obligation 
should be borne by each, according to his ability ; and the 
other part of the advalorem tax, amounting to two per cent, 
of the value of assets, is simply the rent or hire of wealth 
paid to the people by property-holders. 

All citizens have an equal right to that rent ; and, on the 
ground that citizens are equal before the law, they, ( when 
their treasury is in receipt of that natural rent), must be 
considered equally able to contribute to meet the common 
obligations of the treasury. The proceeds of the two-per- 
cent, tax should be used, until wholly exhausted, on the basis 
that all men are equally able to bear the burden of govern- 
ment, and equally entitled to participate in the benefits to be 
derived from any surplus in the treasury. But political 
equality produces or permits unequal results to the citizens, 
and the people must recognize and accept such results. 
Therefore, when the proceeds of the two-per-cent. tax prove 
insufficient to meet the extraordinary expense of government, 
caused by misfortune or public calamity, it becomes neces- 
sary to recognize the unequal ability of citizens to contribute 
to those expenses ; and resort must be had to a measure 
which is thereby rendered just and necessary, — namely, that 
of compelling every citizen to contribute, according to his 
ability, by a further advalorem tax on assets. 

And now, to state in a word the whole broad principle un- 
derlying Rent and Revenue, it is evident that, inasmuch as 
all wealth belongs to all men, the people have a perfect right 
to lay and collect an advalorem tax on assets, whenever and 
to whatever amount the general welfare demands. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LIBERTY. 

The laws relating to the production of wealth should be 
such that citizens would have the power to acquire an income 
as nearly as possible in proportion to the wealth produced by 
each ;— that is, the laws being just, whatever a citizen ac- 
quires, is the measure of the wealth produced by him. All 
wealth belongs equally to all men ; but, to the manifest 
advantage of all men, this wealth would, under just laws, 
accumulate in the hands of those willing and able not only 
to pay the people for the use of it by paying the natural rent, 
but who would produce so much more than they consume 
that, after paying the natural rent, their income would still 
exceed their expenditures, thus enabling them to accumulate 
the wealth representing the excess. A large proportion of 
all citizens are so improvident that, however great their in- 
come, they never, as a rule, permit it to exceed their expendi- 
tures. The laws, to be just, must necessarily recognize this, 
as well as all other evident facts, and in recognizing the 
improvidence as well as the thrift of citizens, must consider 
all men as equally improvident or thrifty ; that is, on the 
principle already set forth, the laws must not attempt to 
distinguish between citizens on account of natural inequali- 
ties, but, considering them equal, must recognize and accept 
the unequal results arising from the natural inequalities. 

Recognizing the improvidence of the many, the law should 
provide against the evil effects that might arise from that 
feature of human nature, for the same reason that the law 
should provide for securing the advantages to be derived 
from the thrift of the few. Otherwise, the proceeds of the 
two per cent, tax should be distributed equally among all 
citizens as fast as collected, and the ordinary expenditures of 
government provided for, as required, by a poll tax equal for 
all citizens. 



34 Liberty. 

But the improvidence of the many would not only cause 
them to squander the money thus obtained, to the manifest 
disadvantage of the improvident individuals themselves, but 
these same individuals would never be able to pay their poll 
tax, and consequently the thrifty would be compelled to bear 
unjustly the entire weight of the common obligations, after 
having paid that which should have provided for a very large 
part of such obligations. Therefore it would be neither wise 
nor just to distribute equally the two-percent, tax money, and 
so it should be expended for the equal benefit of all, in pay- 
ing the ordinary expenses of government. 

Because of the improvidence of human nature, individuals 
should not be allowed to acquire the private ownership of 
property, except in proportion as each produces more than 
he consumes ; from which it follows that citizens, unless they 
receive property by inheritance or gift, should begin life as 
the private owners of a minimum quantity of wealth, — only 
as much as is necessary to secure to all beginners equal 
opportunities. 

Inasmuch as every individual, whether thrifty or improvi- 
dent, if he is to take his place as a citizen, requires a certain 
quantity of private property to enable him to perform the 
duties and comply with the obligations of citizenship, the 
law should recognize that fact, and define or determine a 
minimum quantity which should be exempt from taxation 
and from execution for debt ; because it would be evidently 
unwise to take from a citizen that which he requires to pre- 
vent him from becoming a burden on his fellow citizens. If, 
with such exemption, he does not retain a quantity equal to 
the minimum, then certainly there is so much more reason 
for exempting whatever quantity he does retain. If, having 
the ample opportunities which just laws would secure for 
obtaining profitable employment, he is unwilling to assume 
the duties and comply with the obligations of citizenship, he 
is not entitled to the benefits of citizenship, and should be 
allowed to suffer the consequences of his own depravity. If 
willing, but not able, he ceases to be a citizen and becomes a 
dependent, he is entitled to consideration as such. 

That all individual rights are involved in the ownership of 
wealth, is a proposition that becomes evident as soon as 
the nature of wealth and its ownership is fully understood. 



Liberty. 35 

Liberty, about which so much has been said and written, 
is simply the equal indefeasible right of all citizens to use all 
wealth in their own way, and for their own individual benefit, 
the right of each being limited only by the equal right of 
every other. 

Sovereignty is simply the right of the whole to define and 
enforce the rights of each. 

The nature of liberty, as above defined, forbids that any 
citizen shall be deprived of it, while he continues to be a 
citizen and loyal to the common sovereignty. Consequently 
the sovereign, the people,— should provide by law that no 
citizen can become involved- in debt beyond the value of his 
assets ; that is to say, a national bankrupt law should be 
based upon the fact that a citizen who has nothing, or no 
more than the minimum which the law exempts, can owe 
nothing. 

A national bankrupt law should simply provide methods 
or formalities by which any citizen who finds himself insol- 
vent shall, of his own free will, or may be compelled to, place 
his property in the hands of a receiver for the benefit of his 
creditors. The debtor, having thus, according to the legal 
method prescribed, delivered up all his property except so 
much as may be and should be exempt from such delivery, 
should then be legally declared to be out of debt. An obliga- 
tion to pay, not having wherewith to pay, is an obligation to 
labor for the benefit of the one to whom the payment is to be 
made, without receiving any equivalent. Such an obligation is 
inconsistent with the natural right to liberty, and if enforced 
by law, is slavery. The capacity to labor, — that is to say, 
activity in the broadest sense, for one's own benefit, — is that 
which makes individual liberty desirable to thecitizen. If that 
capacity can legally or justly be embargoed, or diver- 
ted from its natural purpose, that of making liberty desirable, 
then liberty itself is a myth or delusion. 

Inasmuch as a human being brings nothing into the world, 
and can take nothing out of it, his common ownership begins- 
and ends with his existence as an inhabitant of earth, and 
his individual or private ownership of wealth begins and ends 
with his existence as a citizen. At his death, his wealth re- 
verts, ex necessitate rei, to the people. The natural rent of 
all wealth is always equal to the quantity thus reverting 



36 Liberty. 

during any given time, to the people. It is only by paying 
the natural rent, during life, in the form of taxes, that a citi- 
zen can acquire the right to have his wealth transferred at 
his death to his personal friends or relatives. 

Under just laws, every citizen would, as now, be allowed to 
accumulate what he acquires and abstains from using ; to 
engage in busines on his own account when he has accumula- 
ted what he considers enough to justify him in so doing; to let, 
hire, loan, or sell his goods, or his money, and to make any 
and all such exchanges as citizens enjoying the blessings of 
liberty care to make with each other. And, provided only 
that he pays his taxes, he should be allowed to proceed in 
all things, — in acquiring an income, in consuming what he 
legally acquires, in accumulating what he does not consume, — 
exactly or nearly as if he were the absolute owner of whatever 
wealth he does acquire, except only that the people have the 
right to determine and declare when and under what condi- 
tions he may be compelled to accept an equivalent in money 
for any property he may possess. 

Before a just distribution of wealth can take place, or the 
production of wealth be justly regulated, it is necessary that 
a just money be created, to serve as a measure of value, 
medium of exchange, and certificate of purchasing-power. 

The great secret of just distribution is redistribution. A two- 
percent, annual advalorum tax on assets, or purchasing- 
power, redistributes one-fiftieth part of all wealth every 
year. This tax, collected from the rich according to their 
riches, would compel them to make an active and effective 
use of their wealth, in order to be able to pay the tax and 
have enough over for themselves. The proceeds of this tax, 
collected from the rich, would virtually be distributed among 
the poor, because the poorest are most benefited by an equal 
distribution. In fact such a tax, thus distributed, would 
make the rich work more for less money, and enable the poor to 
get more money for less work, — a consummation, certainly, 
that justice demands. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PURCHASING-POWER. 

Before it is possible to understand the nature of wealth and 
its ownership, it is necessary to define perfectly both wealth 
and capital, the distribution of the latter involving that of 
the former. 

This planet, and everything on it except the people, ignor- 
ing dependents, is wealth. Wealth is the thing owned. The 
people are the owner. Citizens, individually, become the 
private owners, sub-owners, lessees, or tenants, through the 
working of the laws governing distribution. 

A certain relation exists between every kind of scarce and 
desirable wealth, and the owners of such wealth, which rela- 
tion presents itself to our observation under various familiar 
names ; but it always implies the coexistence of two or more 
owners of such wealth, each owner desiring to possess that 
of the other, and being williug to make an exchange, if the 
price can be agreed upon. When two things are exchanged, 
one for the other, one is the price of the other. 

Wherever this relation between scarce and desirable wealth 
and its owners exists, it is evident that each of the several 
owners has the ability to buy of the others, or of another, 
some portion of scarce and desirable wealth. The ability to 
buy is 'purchasing -power. Whoever has anything scarce 
and desirable which another is able and willing to buy has 
pur chasing -p ow er . Whenever an exchange is made, each 
party to the exchange sells what he parts with, and buys that 
which he receives. The exchange of money for money, or 
for any other property, is no exception to this rule. Money 
differs from other property in that, being in itself a recog- 
nized measure of purchasing-power, its ownership confers 
the most generalized purchasing-power ; and money is there- 
fore universally desirable as a medium of exchange. 



38 Purchasing-Power. 

A citizen who has only the ability to work, has no pur- 
chasing-power until he finds some way to make his work 
produce wealth. When such a citizen agrees to work for 
wages, he agrees to produce wealth for his employer, in ex- 
change for the wages he is to receive. In the ownership of 
the wealth which he receives as wages, he acquires purchas- 
ing-power. 

Skill, knowledge, etc., by which one individual may con- 
fer health, wealth, pleasure, or happiness upon another, are 
not in themselves purchasing-power ; but, inasmuch as the 
exercise of such skill or knowledge, by persons possessing it, 
may confer on others that for which wealth is desirable, 
mankind are willing to give wealth in exchange for such 
benefits or services. Such benefits or services are products of 
labor, and are wealth. The exercise of skill and knowledge 
is labor. It is the power of the conscious acting on the sub- 
stance or forces of the unconscious, and sometimes on the con- 
scious itself. It is labor modifying wealth, producing new 
forms, relations and conditions. Such products of labor, 
even if intangible and ephemeral are wealth in themselves ; 
and, when produced for the use or benefit of others than the 
producer, the producer does not own them. But he acquires 
purchasing-power in the ownership of the wealth paid him in 
exchange for the products of his labor, or in common language, 
for his services, — that is, in his legal wages or income. 

When the ownership of anything confers purchasing power 
on the owner, we say that the thing has value. In common 
discourse, and even in the present discussion, this use of the 
word, value, is convenient when not misleading. Value, in 
the popular mind, is thought of as if it were really a quality 
of the thing owned. The real thing thought of as value, is 
purchasing-power, which resides in the owner, and not in the 
thing owned. Value, in short is a convenient fiction, found- 
ed on the important reality, purchasing-power 

Inasmuch as purchasing power is the result of a relation, 
and as value means nothing if it does not mean purchasing- 
power, the absurdity of the term, intrinsic value, becomes evi- 
dent. The use of the term value is, as I have said, conven- 
ient, and when fully understood, is well enough ; but intrin- 



Purchasing-Power. 39 

sic value is a term too loose and misleading for any justifiable 
purpose whatever. 

Value, as a term relating to exchanges, is one of a large 
family of similar, and similarly used, terms and expressions. 
We say, for example, A has a horse which he values at $100, 
when we mean that A is the owner of a horse, and estimates 
the quantity of purchasing-power derived by him from that 
ownership at 100 units ; that is to say, as equal to the pur- 
chasing-power derived from the ownership of $100. 

Speaking of anything in which purchasing-power is in- 
volved, whenever we say that things exchange owners, or 
that owners exchange things ; that A buys, B sells, C trades, 
contracts, or promises for a consideration ; that an exchange 
of valuable considerations or commodities has taken place, 
or is proposed ; we should always bear in mind that we refer 
to an exchange or transfer of ownership, and that the pur- 
chasing-power involved is the immediate or ultimate consid- 
eration in the transaction referred to. 

Capital is purchasing-power, neither more nor less. 
' In the popular mind the ideas entertained of property, 
capital, wealth, assets, etc., are very much confused, and the 
terms are frequently, if not generally, applied in a manner- 
well calculated to mislead the superficial thinkers, and puz- 
zle the more profound. 

Among the many so-called definitions of capital, the fol- 
lowing are conspicuous: "Stock in trade;" "property 
employed in business;" "wealth in productive use;" 
" wealth the ownership of which confers purchasing- power;" 
"accumulated labor;" "accumulated products of labor;" 
"means of increasing our power or influence, as political- 
capital." Instead of being simply the " means of increasing 
our power, "capital is power, — purchasing power. Our cap- 
ital certainty does increase our "influence" in this wicked 
world. 

If capital is either wealth or property, it cannot be "accu- 
mulated labor " If capital is the product of labor, or the 
"accumulated products of labor," it cannot possibly be 
identical with wealth of any kind ; because the wealth which 
is said to be the product of labor, consists of wealth which is 
not the product of labor,— as the clay or material of bricks, 
the form and conditions of which have been modified bv labor. 



40 Purchasing-Power. 

Webster, who defines capital as "stock in trade," also 
defines " stock in trade " as "goods kept for sale by a shop- 
keeper ; the fittings and appliances of a workman." 

We have heard that " When each of two things are equal 
to a third, the two things are equal to each other." The 
intelligent reader may apply the last quotation to the above 
quoted definitions of Webster, and see what he makes out of 
it, if anything. 

Perhaps the most generally popular definition of capital is 
the following: "Capital is wealth in productive use; or 
wealth used productively, or employed in business." The 
popular idea of the wealth so employed embraces only wealth 
that has value ; that is, capital is popularly supposed to be 
wealth which has value, and is used productively. For ex- 
ample, all manufactories, store-houses, mills, machinery, 
tools, bonds, stocks, mortgages, money, notes or other repre- 
sentatives of present or prospective wealth, used or held for 
use in trade or in the arts, or exposed to the requirements or 
risks of business or income- getting, are called capital ; while 
dwelling houses, clothing, ornaments, or any species of 
w T ealth or property withdrawn from business, or from the 
market, and held for consumption or ''consumptive 
use," with no view to acquiring income or more wealth 
by its use, or with no view to exchanging it at a profit, is not 
considered as included in capital. 

This popular definition and idea of capital has its origin in 
the illusion that the part of wealth above specified as not 
capital, is really withdrawn from " productive use." The 
truth is that all wealth which is in use by mankind is, or 
should be, in productive use, even while it is being consumed. 
Individuals acquire the natural right to consume by pro- 
ducing, and have the right to consume in proportion to what 
they produce. If they consume more than they produce, 
they will soon have no part of that wealth popularly defined 
as capital, and cannot do business of the kind requiring cap- 
ital, so defined ; but they would be compelled to work for an 
employer for wages. Wages will only enable the worker to 
consume what is considered by society the necessary provi- 
sion for his support as a worker, either because it is believed 
to be required to keep him in condition to earn his wages, or 
because he will not work for less. 



Purchasing -Power. 41 

Work is an essential element of production. Certainly 
the food, clothing and shelter consumed by the workman, 
are wealth used ior the purpose of production, or "wealth 
used productive^," as much as are the stable and food sup- 
plied to a work-horse. The fact that wages in money are 
used as a medium of exchange in that as in other business 
transactions, does not alter the case in the least. Therefore, 
all wealth in the hands of workers is, by' the popular defini- 
tion, capital, because it is "wealth used productively" or 
"in production," even if it is not capital in the popular un- 
derstanding of that same alleged definition. 

Wage- workers exact all that is paid them as wages ; /. e., 
employers pay their workman no more than they are obliged 
to pay. The wealth consumed by the employed is the real 
wages, and is used productively because by its use the user 
is enabled to work productively for his employer, and the 
employer is enabled to secure the fruits of that work. 

Wealth used productively is capital, by the popular defini- 
tion ; therefore, by that definition, the wealth consumed by 
wage-workers is capital. 

Men who engage in productive industry do so for the pur- 
pose of securing an income as the immediate fruit or reward 
of that industry ; but, with men who are not insane, the ulti- 
mate object of productive industry is, not income, but is the 
power and the legal right to consume which income confers. 

Wealth consumed by the capitalist is the real wages paid 
him by the community as an equivalent for the wealth pro- 
duced by him. The capitalist, in successfully managing 
wealth legally assigned to him, is a producer. If a man 
acquires the ownership of wealth in a legal manner, he, in 
the eye of the law, acquires it justly ; and the wealth so 
acquired is a part of the common estate, supposed to be 
exactly proportioned to the productiveness of his transactions. 

Capitalists are, and always should be, in the eye of the law, 
workmen employed by the people to manage wealth and 
produce more. Whatever wealth capitalists consume is the 
wages exacted by them of the people for their services ; and 
the wealth thus consumed, being contributed, or surrendered, 
or paid by the people, to secure the services, is used produc- 
tively, and is therefore, by the popular definition, capital. 



42 Purchasing-Power. 

All men who receive income should be, and in the eye of 
the law are, virtually wage-workers employed directly or in- 
directly by the people. The income consists of increments 
of wealth, intrusted by the people to the income-receiver, 
with the understanding that he may either consume such in- 
crement immediately, or abstain from consuming a part, and 
use the part saved in producing or acquiring more wealth, 
and obtaining more income. In every case the part con- 
sumed is the price paid by the people for the products of 
labor, and is the wages paid to the producer. 

Therefore : All wealth, the ownership of which confers 
purchasing-power, is employed or used productively, and is 
by the proper definition, capital. 

Although, for convenience, in this chapter, we have spoken 
of real wages, legal wages and income, as being increments of 
wealth, it will be seen, in the last analysis, that income and 
legal wages are purchasing-power, and that real wages are 
utility. 



CHAPTER X. 

CAPITAL AND ASSETS. 

The socialists propose to abolish capitalists and capital, 
wages, money and exchanges, by having all business done 
by the community, and by having all wealth, not required 
for current consumption by individuals, held in common for 
the general benefit, to be used as required in productive in- 
dustry, or business, or for consumption ; and they propose 
to give to each individual, credit, or units of credit, for ser- 
vices rendered to the community, in proportion to the magni- 
tude or importance of such services ; and to allow each 
individual to consume in proportion to the number of credits 
or units of credit he obtains. 

In the socialistic scheme, the people collectively would be 
the owners of all wealth. The credits, or credit-units, ac- 
counts of which would be kept to obviate the use of money, 
would really be the measure of individual purchasing-power ; 
or, in common language, the measure of value, although the 
socialists themselves propose to abolish both purchasing- 
power and value. If represented by paper certificates, the 
"credits" of the socialists would constitute a perfect money, 
provided only that the unit of credit always conferred the 
same relative power to consume. The credits would be the 
medium of exchange. The exchanges, however, on this 
socialistic plan, would be -made exclusively between the 
people and individuals, (however that could be done,) and 
never between individuals, as at present. The community 
would exchange wealth consumed by individuals for the 
wealth produced by them, — no other exchanges being per- 
missible. The wealth consumed would be the real wages of 
labor, and, as such, would be used productively, even while 
being consumed, because it would be the price of labor-pro- 
ducts, so used to make production possible. So, if all wealth 
used productively is capital, all wealth, in a socialistic com- 



44 Capital and Assets. 

munity, would be capital, and all men would be wage- 
workers, — the very condition of things which socialism aims 
to overthrow. 

The dream of the socialists, if realizable or realized, could 
never abolish either capital, purchasing-power, wages, rent, 
hire, interest or profits ; and if it were perfectly practicable 
and successful, it would simply distribute capital, purchas- 
ing-power, rent, hire, interest and profits, in -the distribution 
of the units of credit. This will appear more clearly as we 
proceed. 

From what has now been said, and, under the supposition 
that whatever is legal is right, it appears that, according to 
the popular definition of capital, all wealth the ownership of 
which confers purchasing-power upon the owner is capital, 
because all such wealth is used productively ; and it also 
appears that even under the socialistic system the same 
would be true. Capital, and the wealth which is said to con- 
stitute capital, are evidently not identical. Only that part of 
wealth which confers purchasing-power is said to be capital. 
Capital, therefore, increases or diminishes with purchasing- 
power, and not with wealth. For example : the ownership of 
a twenty-dollar gold piece in the posession of the owner, if he 
is in New York city, confers purchasing-power ; but, if the 
owner should withdraw with his coin from society, and take 
up a solitary residence in some uninhabited place, or in any 
other manner cut off all communication with his fellow men, 
his purchasing-power would be gone ; or, if the coin should 
be lost beyond recovery, it would continue to be wealth, but 
would cease to be owned ; or, if owned its ownership would 
confer no purchasing -power. In fact, the purchasing-power 
proceeding from the ownership of every known species of 
wealth is constantly fluctuating, and is liable to annihilation, 
while the nature, substance and form of the wealth upon 
which the purchasing-power is based, remains the same, or 
varies on entirely different lines. Upon a little reflection, it 
will appear that capital, purchasing- power, and wealth, are 
all quantitive, and that the unit for the measurement of a 
quantity of wealth cannot be used for the exact measurement 
of a quantity of capital, while capital and purchasing- power 
are both measured by the money unit ; or, in common lan- 
guage, the value of capital corresponds with the quantity of 



Capital and Assets. 45 

purchasing-power its ownership confers . For example : when 
the value of a certain quantity of wealth is said to be one 
dollar, the ownership of that wealth will confer a purchasing- 
power equal to that conveyed by the ownership of one dollar 
in money. As capital it is then equal in quantity to one 
dollar ; but the same wealth which is supposed to constitute 
the dollars- worth of capital, may, without varying in kind 
or quantity, be worth very much less or more than one dollar 
in money ; but, in exact proportion to its value in money, 
will it be considered capital. Certainly, then, capital is not 
identical with that part of wealth which is commonly mis- 
called capital. 

Capital is a relation, or something which depends upon 
a relation, — the identical relation upon which purchasing- 
power depends. 

When, in common discourse, we say that a man has a capi- 
tal of $1,000 invested in his business, we mean that the owner- 
ship of the wealth he holds or uses for business purposes 
confers upon him a purchasing-power equal to that conferred 
by the ownership of $1,000, in money ; and, in thus using the 
term capital, we appear to be speaking of some quality or 
property of the wealth itself, while we really refer to a rela- 
tion, and mean neither more nor less than that one thousand 
units of purchasing-power are used for business purposes. 
In other words, capital is neither more nor less than purchas- 
ing-power ; or is, like value, a convenient but frequently 
misleading fiction, based on purchasing-power. 

We are therefore compelled to pronounce the popular defi- 
nition of capital not tenable. In a scientific investigation, 
all misleading terms should either be avoided or accurately 
defined, and certainly nothing could be more misleading than 
to make a false distinction, or to give two names to the same 
things, and proceed as if two distinct things'were referred to. 

To say that capital is that part of purchasing-power em- 
ployed productively is to make a false distinction, because ail 
wealth the ownership of which confers purchasing power is 
held or used productively; and therefore all purchasing-power 
is used productively, and purchasing-power and capital are 
identically the same thing. 

It is doubtless to avoid confusion of terms that the word, 
assets, has come into use among business men. When we read 



46 Capital and Assets. 

that the assets of a corporation exceed its liabilities by so ma- 
ny thousands of dollars, we know exactly what is meant. The 
purchasing-power conferred by the ownership of one dollar 
being the unit, we know the meaning to be that, if from the 
purchasing-power conferred on the corporation by the owner- 
ship of its property, the purchasing -power (which is also debt- 
paying power) required to pay its debts be subtracted, the 
remaining purchasing-power will be equal to that conferred 
by the ownership of the number of dollars mentioned. Thus 
we are enabled to discover that "assets" are neither more 
nor less than any property the ownership of which confers 
purchasing-power. 

We are now prepared to understand clearly that the several 
terms, value, capital, ability to buy, debt-paying power, power 
to sell, etc., etc., are conventional terms, used in common dis- 
course when speaking of purchasing-power, and that they are 
used as convenient but often misleading substitutes for pur- 
chasing power ; but that they always mean purchasing- power 
in some of its modes, or phases, or relations, and never mean 
anything else. We further understand that wealth, to be 
property, must be owned ; and that property, to be assets, 
must confer purchasing-power upon the owner. 

I do not know of any term or terms used exactly as I pur- 
pose hereafter to use the words, asset and assets. But the 
term, assets, as defined by Webster and Walker, is nearer to 
what I require than any other with which I am acquainted ; 
and, rather than attempt to invent a word, I will use "assets." 
Asset (the singular) is not even an English word ; but I will 
use that also. I will define asset to be any one article, or 
portion of property, the ownership of which confers purchas- 
ing-power, — as i house, a dollar, a note, a mortgage, etc.; and 
assets, to be the plural of asset, — as houses, dollars, notes, 
mortgages, etc. " That is to say, all and every part of what in 
the language of common discourse would be called property 
having value, is either ah asset or assets. It may be remarked 
here, however, that just money, (which will hereafter be de- 
scribed,) would be an exceptional asset, inasmuch as it would 
not be subject to taxation, as the purchasing-power conferred 
by its ownership would constitute the only technically 
unproductive capital. 



CHAPTER XL 

CRITICISMS. • 

In Ricardo's work, "On Wages," the following definition 
appears : 

"Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is 
employed in production, and consists of food, clothing, raw 
materials, machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labor." 

Now we have shown conclusively that all wealth the owner- 
ship of which confers purchasing-power is " employed in pro- 
duction," and is " necessary to give effect to labor," — exactly 
that effect to labor which labor at any given time has. There- 
fore, according to Ricardo's words, all wealth that in common 
discourse is said to have value, is capital ; but, according to 
Ricardo's idea, capital is only a part of that wealth. The 
fact is, that capital is not wealth at all, but is purchasing- 
power, depending upon a certain relation between wealth 
and its owners. 

In a paragraph of John Stuart Mill's " Principles of Politi- 
cal Economy," he calls capital the " sum of all values destined 
by their respective possessors for productive reinvestment," 
and says that " commodities are either capital or not capital, 
according to the will of the capitalists." Therefore, according 
to that paragraph, commodities are values, and a capitalist, 
by so willing it, may convert his commodities or values, from 
being capital into being not capital, by a purely mental pro- 
cess. After depriving himself of all capital by that mental 
process, he would either be no capitalist or would be a capi- 
talist without capital. Mill does not say that if the capitalist 
should thus become no capitalist he could reconvert his 
values or commodities into capital again, but speaks as if, 
being thus deprived of capital, he would still be a capitalist. 
Of course Mill meant the will of the owner when he wrote 



48 Criticisms. 

" will of the capitalist." In the same paragraph Mill says 
that " the sum of all values so destined," etc., "composes 
the capital of the country." By this statement it appears 
that, while Mill recognized the fact that capital consists of 
" values," he considered value to be a quality of property or 
' ' commodity." He did not know that value is nothing if not 
pur chasing -power, and that therefore capital, a power con- 
ferred by ownership, could not be identical with "commodi- 
ties " or " property," the thing owned. 

The simple fact that writers like Mill and Ricardo, famous 
for their orthodox and authoritative writings on what has 
been called the "science of exchanges," should thus loosely 
use the terms of most importance to that science, should of 
itself be enough to make any thoughtful and observing reader 
mistrust the reasoning and doubt the conclusions of all the 
most distinguished authorities on political science. 

I do not propose to criticise the views of other writers any 
farther than may be necessary to enable me the better to 
present my own. 

Henry George defines wealth to be " the object and result 
of what we call productive labor ; that is, labor which gives 
value to material things." Does he mean exactly what he 
says? It is evident that, according to this definition, wealth 
consists exclusively either of value or of material things made 
valuable by labor. That is to say, no material things are or 
can be wealth, unless they have been made valuable by labor. 
Now let us see where this leads. Before Robinson Crusoe was 
shipwrecked, then, neither the island nor, anything on it was 
wealth, nor did his labor make wealth of any part of his pos- 
sessions before man Friday arrived, because while Robinson 
was alone nothing could have value. Value is a creature or 
result of have and want, — two haves and two wants, with an 
agreement or willingness of at least one of two owners to make 
an exchange. When Robinson had something which Friday 
wanted, and Friday had something, or by his labor could pro- 
duce something, which Robinson wanted, and the prices were 
agreed upon, or could have been agreed upon, then and not 
till then did value or purchasing-power exist upon that island. 

Now, as I use the word, wealth, the island and everything 
on it were wealth before Robinson landed there, while he re- 
mained there, and after he departed. By wealth, in its most 



Criticisms. 49 

generalized sense, I mean the unconscious element or part of 
the universe, and somethingjmore. In a more restricted sense, 
as the wealth of a nation or of the world, I mean exactly that 
which would remain of the property of a nation, or of the 
world, if the people should perish or be removed in a night, 
leaving all their possessions behind them, and something more 
which would have perished with them. 

Robinson Crusoe's house had no value until his man Friday 
came, but George would undoubtedly say that the house was 
produced by the productive labor of Robinson and was wealth 
for that reason ; nevertheless, according to G-eorge's definition, 
all wealth has value, and is but a part, the material or tangi- 
ble part, of property having value ; or else it is value itself. 
By my definition, wealth having valuers but a small part of 
all wealth. By] George's definition, all or any wealth is in 
part at least the product of labor ; by my definition, much 
wealth having value is not in any degree the product or result 
of labor, as will appear more clearly farther on. 

George, in defining capital, says that all capital is wealth, 
but only a part of wealth, — that part which is devoted to the 
" aid "of production." By my definition capital is not wealth, 
but power, purchasing- power. 

By George's definition, land unimproved by the hand of 
labor, no matter how valuable it may be, is not wealth, and 
therefore is not and cannot be capital. 

Now George selects his terms and defines them very in- 
geniously to suit a preconceived idea, which is that what he 
calls wealth should be untaxed, and that land, which is not 
produced by labor, and for that reason belongs equally and 
indisputably to all men, should be taxed nearly or quite to 
the extent of its value. On his arbitrary definition of wealth, 
hinge his definitions of capital and wages. By the use of 
these definitions, he has been able to give plausibility to de- 
fective arguments, and to deceive himself and others, as well 
as to enlighten others and satisfy himself, by making certain 
truths exceedingly clear. He deceives himself and others by 
making a false distinction between land and other things 
'-' which nature supplies to man without his labor ; " that is, 
between Jand and the "material tilings" to which labor 
Ogives value." He attempts to prove, in effect, that land, 
which he says is not wealth, is common property ; and that 

7 



50 Celticisms. 

the "material things," which form a part of all of what he 
calls wealth, are not common property. The truth is that all 
"material things" whether improved by labor or not, are 
common property, and are so for the same reason that 
]and is common property. George has enlightend many 
minds by making them understand how nicely and evenly, 
so to speak, private property can be confiscated by tax- 
ation. He has also done a great service to his fellow 
men by making it known, among them, that land and the 
value of land belong to the people, and that the people there- 
fore have the right to recover that value through taxation, — 
which taxation, by confiscating the rent of land, confiscates 
only that which belongs to everybody, and to no one more 
than to another. 

Only a part of the value of what Gfeorge calls wealth is the 
product or result of labor, and the other part of its value, or 
that part which is not the result of labor, belongs to every- 
body, and should be confiscated by taxation. 

The fact that a part of what George means by wealth is not 
the product or result of labor, makes his definition of wealth 
absurd ; for he declares wealth to be exclusively the product 
of labor. He explicitly states also that "nothing which 
nature supplies to man without his labor is wealth." There- 
fore, if the " material things " to which labor gives value are 
supplied gratuitously by nature, they are not in themselves 
wealth, according to his definition, even after they are modi- 
fied by labor, and his definition of wealth includes only the 
"value" given to those "material things" by labor. Value 
is intangible and immaterial. It is not value that George 
means by wealth. He does mean the material and tangible 
things which are valuable. Therefore, although we know 
what George means by wealth, his definition or description 
of the thing he means, specifies that thing out of existence, 
or into the absurdity of being that which he specifically de- 
clares it is not. Much more is his definition absurd and mis- 
leading when we take into consideration the fact that a part 
of the value of such "material things" as have value is not 
derived from labor, but is, like the value of land, the result 
of have and want. His idea seems to be that all "material 
things," unimproved by labor are "land," but that after labor 
"gives value" to them they are wealth. 



Criticisms. 51 

George says : " The real and natural distinction is between 
things which are the produce of labor and things which are 
the gratuitous offerings of nature, or to adopt the terms of 
political economy, between wealth and land ;" that is to say, 
" things which are the produce of land" are " wealth" and 
"things which are the gratuitous offerings of nature" are 
"land." Speaking of "a house and the lot on which it 
stands," he says, "The one is produced by human labor and 
belongs to the class in political economy styled wealth. The 
other is a part of nature, and belongs to the class in political 
economy styled land." 

That George is the first writer who ever used the terms 
wealth and land in that way would not appear from his man- 
ner of referring to those terms ; but I believe that he is the 
very first, and he certainly ought to be the very last. By his 
own definition of land, just s quoted, which appears on the 
same page of his book, everything which is " a part of nature " 
or "supplied by nature" is land, and only the produce of 
labor is wealth. Now the house consists of what George calls 
"material things" such as wood, iron, and other metals, 
several kinds of earth, or what the geologists calls "rocks," 
etc., etc., no one of which is the produce of labor, every one 
of which, comes out of, grows upon or has been a part, of 
the earth, and is a "part of nature" — the "gratuitous offer- 
ings of nature." That human labor has changed their forms 
and appearance, brought them together and combined them 
into a structure called a house, does not make them any the 
less a "part of nature" or the "gratuitous offerings of 
nature." Now if some generous friend should give George 
a dog, and George should clip off the dog's hair, and ears, 
and tail and otherwise improve the dog, would George say 
that he had "produced" the dog, and ungratefully deny that 
his friend had given it to him ? Perhaps not, but why not % 
If his labor did not produce the dog, neither did human labor 
produce the "material things " in or of the house. If the dog 
was the gift of his friend, equally so the "material things" 
composing the house are the " offerings of nature," — a " part 
of nature," — and, by George's definition, are "land," not 
"wealth ;" and George, in saying that the house is "wealth," 
and not "land" plainly and squarely contradicts himself. 

If George should adhere strictly to his own formal defi- 



52 Criticisms. 

nition of the term "land," he would change his whole argu- 
ment, and arrive at very different results from those pre- 
sented in his work. The distinction which he has labored so 
much to make and sustain, between the "material things" 
incorporated by human labor in the house, and the "lot on 
which it stands," is a false one, and has led its author into, 
or confirmed him in, very serious errors. Let Henry George 
write another work on political economy and adhere to his 
own definition of land, and adhere also to the same methods 
of reasoning which he so plainly declares to be necessary and 
to be the only right or reliable methods, and it is certain that 
he himself would be more thoroughly dissatisfied with "Pro- 
gress and Poverty" than any one else is likely to be. 

If an author having discovered important distinctions be- 
tween classes of things, — distinctions which have been so far 
ignored that no classification has ever been made on the lines 
of those distinctions, he has the right to classify the things 
anew, and to give suitable names to the new classes. The 
names given being names of new things, must necessarily 
be either new names or old names with a new meaning. He 
can therefore take his choice among old names, or he may coin 
new ones. If hq discovers or creates anything new and dis- 
tinct from all other things, he has the right to name the thing 
discovered or created by him, or if he discovers that some- 
thing long known but heretofore considered to be a part of 
something else, or identical with something else, is really dis- 
tinct from everything else, he also has a right to name that 
thing. To select a suitable name is scarcely less difficult than 
to coin a new one, but if the writer always uses the same name 
for the same thing, and so clearly describes the thing named 
that the reader knows exactly what thing it is, almost any 
convenient name will do ; for example, there is, as Henry 
George says, a "real and natural distinction between things 
which are the produce of labor and things which are the 
gratuitous offerings of nature" and if that writer after classi- 
fying " things" on that line of distinction names everything 
of one class "wealth" and everything of the other class 
"land" he has a right to do so, provided only that he con- 
tinues to observe the distinction and adhere to the names 
throughout the argument based upon that distinction. So, 
also, by the same rule and for the same purpose, he would 



Criticisms. 53 

have a right to name one class flesh and the other class fish, 
or call one class - hardware and the other class snowflakes, if, 
by the use of such terms, he could more easily make the 
truth to be known and understood. To say that a house is 
the product of labor, in the sense that labor combined and 
arranged the materials incorporated in the house and thereby 
produced the house, is true enough ; but nature furnished the 
materials and therefore the house is, by George's definition, 
both "wealth" and "land." But George refers to the house 
as an example of exactly what he means by "wealth" pure 
and simple, and to the lot as an example of exactly what he 
means by "land" unmixed, just as if he did not understand 
his own most explicit statements. 

The explanation of this very remarkable feature of his work 
is simply that George himself believes and wishes to convince 
others that the lot should be taxed and that the house should 
not be taxed. Unfortunately for his argument, he is mistaken 
in that belief just about one half, and consequently cannot 
more than half support his views by truthful statements and 
correct reasoning ; and, to convince himself and others that 
his views are correct, he must necessarily employ arguments 
as badly mixed as aie his doctrines, — half good, half bad. 
Still, in spite of loose terms and definitions, leading to im- 
perfect results, I regard Henry George's "Progress and 
Poverty " as one the very best books ever written. 

Anything to be scientific mast have, "in point of form, the 
character of logical perfection ; and, in point of substance, 
the character of truth." As a fair example of the unscien- 
tific nature of much that is published and accepted as science 
I quote from a recently published work by a writer who styles 
himself an "economist" and a "strict disciple of what is 
usually called the English or Orthodox school," and claims 
to have "reasoned on the lines of Mill and Bicardo beyond 
the limit where they stopped, with the result of greatly modi- 
fying and sometimes subverting their conclusions." His 
words are these : "I would myself prefer a definition of the 
term (capital) when scientifically used, broader than that of 
Mill, but not broader than its popular use. Wealth I would 
define as the existent products of labor, whose utility is not 
yet exhausted ; capital as that portion of wealth from which 
an income or profit is expected in addition to the return of 



54 Criticisms. 

the principal." Of course by starting out with such defi- 
nitions as these, arbitrarily assuming them to be scientific, 
he has no difficulty whatever in "subverting" or " modify- 
ing" to his heart's content. This writer is probably one of 
those "blind leaders of the blind" who would declare that 
" labor is the sole creator of values," meaning that all value 
is created by labor. 

I have already explained that, in declaring such alleged 
definitions to be unscientific, I do not mean that they are 
necessarily so. On the contrary, inasmuch as, on their face, 
they relate to a real distinction, as in this case between all 
labor products, or labor products considered simply as such, 
and a certain class or part of such products, I have not denied 
that any names or terms whatever may be used to mark the 
distinction, provided that in the subsequent argument the 
distinction is not forgotten, and the terms are always con- 
sistently employed. George and the writer last quoted do 
not claim that the terms used by them are scientific simply 
because they mark a real distinction and name distinct classes 
of things, but they do claim that they, as scientists, define 
and employ the terms wealth and capital in a manner more 
nearly approaching logical perfection, and in a manner more 
likely to secure truthful conclusions, than have other scien- 
tists, and each for himself believes, or would have his readers 
believe, that no other definitions of wealth and capital could 
be more scientific than theirs. They wish, for their own pur- 
poses, to give a certain significance to terms already in use 
as scientific terms, rather than to find suitable names for 
classes of things. By their definitions capital is a part of 
wealth, and wealth consists exclusively of the products of 
labor ; but no one thing which either of these writers men- 
tions as being wealth, pure and simple, is exclusively the 
product of labor. Therefore it is in connection with what 
follows the formal definitions of the terms, capital and wealth, 
as given by these writers,fthat their unscientific nature appears. 



CHAPTER XII. 

WEALTH. 

I shall, of coarse, endeavor to be more scientific in the 
selection and use of terms, than others have been who have 
written on the subjects which I treat. As to whether I suc- 
ceed or not, each reader will either form an opinion for him- 
self, will adopt one formed for him by somebody else, or will 
go without an opinion. If he makes any mistake in the 
matter, so much the worse for him. 

By our classification of things into conscious and uncon- 
scious, all the unconscious is wealth, of which the conscious 
is the owner ; but, in relation to any one conscious being, or 
to any number or class of such beings, everything is wealth 
which can be used or utilized by the being or beings in ques- 
tion. To the extent that conscious beings can use and 
utilize each other, conscious beings are or may be wealth. 
Therefore wealth consists of all of the unconscious, and of 
any and every part of the conscious that may be rightfully 
used or utilized by any other part of the conscious. Exactly 
where the line of absolute distinction between wealth and 
not- wealth exists in nature,— that is, the line upon one side 
of which all is wealth and upon the other side of which 
nothing is wealth, — is a question which, however important 
in itself, does not require an answer here. 

It is sufficient for the scope of this work, to consider the 
owner of wealth to be a conscious being, or a collective entity 
composed of conscious beings, and to consider wealth to be 
anything which such a being, or entity, has the right to use 
or utilize. One example, I think, will be sufficient to illus- 
trate my meaning. 1 do not consider that, technically, a 
man owns his own body, because every part of his body is a 
part of himself. To say that he owns himself, or that con- 



Wealth. 56 

scious beings own themselves, would be equivalent to saying 
that everything is wealth. That assertion would, even if 
true in fact, obliterate the line of distinction which our pur- 
pose requires us to observe, and which, the distinction being 
a true one, we are justified in maintaining. Every thing that 
any man has the right to use or utilize, except the several parts 
of his own person, is in its relation to that man, wealth. 

If any superior being has the right to make a slave of man, 
man is a part of the wealth of that being. But, as only a 
superior being could have such a right, and as men are to be 
considered equal, man can have no right to make a slave of 
his fellow man, and men are not wealth in their relations to 
each other. 

In our treatmeat of dependent human beings, we are sup- 
posed not to use but to assist them. 

After these explanations, our definitions of wealth and 
property cannot well be misunderstood. 

In relation to humanity, everything except human beings, 
which can be used or utilized by mankind, is wealth,— the 
wealth of humanity. 

Ownership is the right to use or utilize wealth. Property 
is wealth owned. The only difference between wealth and 
property is this : Wealth is a thing considered by itself . 
Property is wealth in its relation to an owner. If all of con- 
sciousness everywhere in the universe should perish, and the 
unconscious continue to exist, the unconscious would cease 
to be wealth, because it could not be owned. The world and 
every thing in and on it, except humanity, is wealth owned 
by humanity ; therefore, in speaking of that wealth with 
reference to that relation, it is all and every part of it pro- 
perty. If mankind should 'perish, it would continue to be 
both wealth and property,— not of mankind, indeed, but of 
all remaining conscious beings. We say that wild horses, 
roaming at will through an uninhabited country, are not 
owned, because, when we so speak we refer to the appropria- 
tion of horses to individual use or ownership ; but, if we refer 
to the relation of the horses to the people who own the terri- 
tory, we say that they are owned by that people. If we say 
that a supposed undiscovered island and all the wealth it 
may contain is not property, we refer to the distribution of 
wealth among the several nations, and to the international 



Wealth. 57 

laws which declare that such undiscovered wealth shall 
belong to the first one who discovers it. But horses and 
islands are wealth, and always will be, while there is a pos- 
sibility of their being useful to any conscious being. 

As wealth consists of nearly everything, it has an almost 
infinite variety of qualities. It includes matter with "all its 
subtle, nice affinities, its virtues, motions, laws." Time and 
space are perhaps entirely comprehended in the single term, 
wealth. But every quality pertaining to wealth may be con- 
sidered as insignificant except as it is involved in the one 
great characteristic of all wealth, — its adaptability in a greater 
or less degree to supply the wants or satisfy the desires of its 
owner. Therefore, in estimating the quantity of wealth in 
this world, we do not do so in terms of- weight, length, 
breadth or thickness, or of density, elasticity or other physi- 
cal characteristic ; but we do estimate it in terms of what is 
purely a relation, — the relation of any given portion to the 
desires and wants of man, — the relation, that is, of adapta- 
bility, or suitableness to such desires or wants. For exam- 
ple, supposing bricks to be exactly alike, two bricks are 
exactly twice as much wealth as one brick, when considered 
simply as bricks ; but bricks, when built into a wall and con- 
sidered as a part of a house, are more wealth than when con- 
sidered simply as bricks. So also the house in a desirable 
location would be more wealth than would an equally good 
house in an undesirable location, — not on account of its 
greater desirability, but on account of its being part of a 
quantity of wealth which, as a whole, is better adapted to sat- 
isfy human desires or supply human wants. Clay is wealth ; 
but a brick is more wealth than the clay from which it is 
made, although there is less material, less weight in the 
brick than in the clay. When a superabundance of clay 
exists, of uniform quality and equally accessible, it is all 
wealth, and one ton of it is exactly as much wealth as 
another ton ; but only so much of all the clay is desirable as 
is required for use or conversion into bricks. If the supply 
were just sufficient for the demand, it would all be desirable. 
If the demand should exceed the supply, there would be a 
scarcity, and the desirability would be increased or intensi- 
fied ; but the quantity of wealth would not be increased 
thereby, nor otherwise affected by the scarcity. 



58 Wealth. 

Whoever increases the suitableness or adaptability of 
wealth increases the quantity of wealth, because wealth is 
considered only in that relation to human desires and wants. 

The desirability of wealth depends, first upon its suitable- 
ness, and next upon whether it is required for use or not. 
Desirability becomes intensified with scarcity; adaptability 
does not. 

Value depends upon the existence of two or more owners 
of scarce and desirable wealth, each of which has some 
wealth of a kind which the other desires to possess ; and it 
further depends upon the willingness of at least one of the 
owners to exchange with the other. Value depends upon 
adaptability only in that it depends upon desirability. Value 
never indicates an abundance, but always a scarcity of 
wealth. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

JUSTICE. 

The adaptability, or suitableness, of wealth is in proportion 
to the number of desires and wants it will satisfy. Utility is 
that which satisfies a desire or supplies a want ; therefore, 
utility is a quality or relation of that wealth only which is, 
or is to be, employed. The utility of the wealth of mankind 
depends, first, on its adaptability ; second, on its being 
employed to satisfy the desires or supply the wants of man- 
kind ; and, third, on the number of desires and wants it does 
satisfy when so employed. Labor, or effort expended in the 
production of wealth, should be so directed as to secure the 
greatest utility ; that is, it should be expended in producing 
such kinds or classes of wealth as will, in proportion to the 
labor or eifort expended, satisfy the largest number of desires 
and wants. 

In estimating the quantity of wealth in its relation to the 
possible desires and wants of humanity, we have seen that 
it is measured by its adaptability, or suitableness ; but when 
the quantity of wealth, in its relation to the known or sup- 
posed desires and wants of any given nation is estimated, it is 
measured by utility, and such wealth as is not supposed to 
be necessary to or required by that nation is considered of no 
account whatever, or as if it were not a part of the nation's 
wealth. 

In estimating the wealth of the world, or of an uninhabited 
continent, with reference to no definite population or number 
of inhabitants, and with reference to every possible want and 
desire of human beings, we measure the quantity by adapta- 
bility or suitableness ; but in estimating the wealth of a cer- 
tain nation or people we would measure the quantity by its 



60 Justice. 

actual, probable, or possible utility ; that is, by all the utility 
expected to be derived from its ownership by that nation or 
people. 

Individuals "and nations are rich or poor in proportion to 
the quantity of wealth they own as measured by the utility 
to be derived from that ownership. 

That utility which supplies a want is certain to promote 
the general welfare, because a want requires for its supply 
something which will really benefit the recipient. We want, 
consciously or unconsciously, that which will do us good ; 
we desire that which we think we want. We desire some- 
thing to satisfy a supposed want, which may be wholly 
imaginary, and the satisfaction of our most intense desires 
frequently injure more than they benefit us. Therefore that 
utility which satisfies desires may or may not promote the 
general welfare. We are always conscious of our desires, but 
frequently unconscious of our most imperative wants. De- 
sires should always, as far as possible, represent wants, but 
frequently they do not. 

Plenty of fresh, pure air, comfortable homes, good, healthy 
food, suitable clothing, just enough exercise, peace and quiet, 
reasonable leisure, competent medical attendance, knowledge, 
society, liberty and security, are some of the common wants 
of men and women, well known and about which there can 
be no mistake. Of two nations, that is the richer in which 
the wealth required to satisfy these common wants exists in 
the greater abundance. The laws and institutions of a coun- 
try should promote the increase of wealth, as measured by its 
utility, in supplying such wants of its citizens. This can be 
accomplished in one way only, — by establishing and main- 
taining justice ; that is, by securing to every one his own, or 
that which by natural right belongs to him ; by making legal 
rights correspond with natural rights ; in one word, by the 
legalization and protection of natural rights. Justice is the 
only stimulant required to make citizens industrious, and 
industry productive. 

While a nation should direct its industries on the line of 
wants, because that is the line of greatest utility and economy, 
individuals will naturally and necessarially seek to produce 
and acquire wealth on the line of desires. Inasmuch as the 
desires of any individual represent both his real and imagin- 



Justice. 61 

ary wants, (exactly what he himself thinks he wants), he 
cannot distinguish the real from the supposed or imaginary 
wants, and the people have no right to make such distinction 
for the individual ; that is to say, the laws cannot rightfully 
decide, in individual cases, which are the real and which the 
imaginary wants. But the law, being the formal expression 
of the collective will of the people, has the right to and 
should promote the general welfare by encouraging the pro- 
duction of wealth on the line of wants rather than on the line 
of desires, — because, when it does so, that line becomes the 
line of the collective desires, and of what the people collec- 
tively believe to be individual wants. 

The people, by law, determine what kinds of wealth may 
or may not be produced, by determining what industrial 
pursuits may and what may not be engaged in, and to what 
extent and under what restrictions or conditions the several 
industries may be carried on. For example, of the four indus- 
tries, highway- robbery, gambling, speculation, and export ation, 
the government of the United States prohibits the first, restricts 
the second, permits the third, and encourages the fourth. 

Just laws simply define the right. 'To establish justice 
among men, just laws must be made and enforced. 

With a government of the people by and for the people, 
whatever is legal is necessarily supposed to be right ; that is, 
the law defines what the people, collectively, believe to be 
right, or at least declare to be right, whether they believe it 
or not ; and, inasmuch as the sovereignty or law-making 
power belongs by natural right to the people, there is no 
higher authority, no appeal from the decision of the people, 
except an appeal to the people, — an appeal to the people of 
to-day against the declaration of the people of yesterday. 
Therefore whatever a citizen legally acquires he is supposed 
to be rightfully entitled to. All that the people have any 
right to demand of a citizen is that he shall duly respect and 
abide by the laws. It is the business of the people so to 
legislate that legal rights shall correspond as nearly as possi- 
ble with natural rights. 

I shall now define the term, labor, to mean anything done 
by any person for the purpose of acquiring wealth. For 
example, we go to the opera or theatre, to hear music and 
enjoy the entertainment. The building and its appurtenances 



62 Justice. 

are wealth, of a part of which we become the owners for the 
evening ; that is, we pay money for our seats and for the use 
we may make of whatever else is provided for the entertain- 
ment of the audience. During the evening certain manifesta- 
tions of force, the product of labor, produced by the labor of 
the actors and others, affect our senses agreeably, particularly 
our vision and our hearing. Our desire for such pleasurable 
sights and sounds is thereby gratified,— gratified by having 
acquired, owned, used or utilized, the wealth so produced by 
the labor and effort for our enjoyment. In going to the thea- 
tre, if we pay for admission, we buy, acquire, own and con- 
sume wealth as certainly as if we should invest the same 
amount of money in the materials for a dinner and eat the 
dinner. Air or ether, vibrating with song, is wealth improved 
or modified by labor, and is as much the product of labor as 
is a mince-pie. The song is produced by the labor of the 
singer ; the pie by the labor of the pie-maker. Lawyers, doc- 
tors, congressmen, speculators, usurers, tradesmen, shop- 
keepers, and all persons who acquire wealth by doing any 
thing which is legal, should be considered to be producers, 
and should be producers in reality, because the laws should 
provide as perfectly as may be against the possibility of 
acquiring wealth except by those who produce an equivalent 
for their acquisitions. 

The people collectively should aim to secure the greatest 
utility for all, — a maximum of utility in proportion to the 
aggregate labor expended. Each individual will, as a rule, 
endeavor to secure a maximum of utility for himself. 

Whatever the laws and form of government may be any 
where, money measures the difficulty of obtaining any speci- 
fied portion of existing wealth, because in every country indi- 
viduals, as a rule, labor to produce things which will sell for 
money, and with the money buy what they desire for them- 
selves. No labor is expended in the production of wealth 
which has no value ; that is, which cannot be sold for 
money. Thus it comes about that the wealth of an individual 
is estimated in dollars' -worth, or by value ; because labor is 
expended in acquiring money ; and, in the case of any one 
individual, the usefulness or effectiveness of his labor is 
measured by the number of dollars he acquires, and his 
money measures his ability to satisfy his desires. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LABOR. 

We estimate the quantity of wealth in the world by adap- 
tability, or suitableness, when no reference is had to whether 
or not it will ever be used or utilized. We estimate the quanti- 
ty of the wealth of any nation by the utility which it is 
expected that nation will derive from its ownership. We esti- 
mate the quantity of the wealth of an individual by value' ; 
that is, by the purchasing-power its ownership confers on him. 
In the every -day affairs of men, individual wealth is always 
estimated by this standard, (present or prospective value), 
and we seldom think of measuring it by any other standard, 
except in connection with changes in the laws. 

Unfortunately laws have been frequently made with a view 
to increase the value rather than the utility of wealth, the 
effect of such laws being to benefit the few, and injure the 
many. Any law which establishes or promotes an unjust 
monopoly ; any legislation which makes any kind of desira- 
ble wealth more difficult to obtain than it should be ; will 
increase the value of wealth, while diminishing its utility, 
provided that the difficulties thus created or the monopolies 
thus established do not diminish the production. When such 
difficulties and monopolies restrict or diminish production, 
they frequently destroy more value or purchasing-power than 
they create, thus somewhat benefiting the few, to the much 
greater injury of the many. 

Remembering that value is nothing if not purchasing- 
power, and that capital and purchasing-power are identical, 
the reader will have discovered that the legislation of a coun- 
try should promote the production of wealth, estimating it 
by its utility, and so regulate the distribution of capital that 
each citizen may be enabled to secure for himself as much 



64 Labor. 

wealth as he has a natural right to consume ; that is, capital 
should be so distributed that labor can have its just reward. 

The immediate object of labor is income, an income of 
money, which we will assume to be identical with dollars and 
cents. Every citizen who receives the number of dollars and 
cents to which his labor gives him a natural right does not 
surfer from unjust distribution, however much he and others 
may suffer otherwise from unjust laws. The quantity of 
wealth produced, and the relations of wealth to capital, are 
affected by nearly every law that is enforced ; but, whoever 
secures his share of money can buy with that money his 
share of existing wealth ; because, from the standpoint of 
individual desires, the total of capital exactly represents all 
existing wealth, and the capital at any time existing is esti- 
mated in money units. A just distribution of capital at any 
time, implies^ a just distribution of the wealth at that time 
existing. It does not make any difference whether the 
income of an individual is received in the form of daily wages 
in money, paid him by an employer, or in the form of busi- 
ness profits, or rent, or interest. What matters to him is 
whether or not he receives the income to which his labor of 
right entitles him. 

Humanity suffers now, and always has suffered, far more 
from the unjust distribution of capital than from a lack of 
desirable wealth ; for the simple reason that the law-makers 
have found it to their interest to have it so. The few, having 
always controlled legislation in their own interest, have man- 
aged to monopolize capital, and keep the many at work pro- 
ducing wealth ; and until the many not only take the law- 
making power into their own hands, but learn to legislate 
intelligently, the just distribution of capital will be impossi- 
ble. Human selfishness will always incline law-makers to 
use the law making power to secure as much capital as pos- 
sible for themselves, without regard to the rights of others ; 
and, until the many know their own rights, there is no hope 
that the few will surrender the advantages which superior 
intelligence gives them, whereby they are enabled, directly 
and openly or indirectly and secretly, to establish laws which 
enable them unjustly to monopolize capital. 

Capital is purchasing-power conferred by the ownership of 
property. Property is wealth owned ; that is, property is 



LA.BOR. 65 

the thing which the owner has the right to use or utilize, 
and is wealth. The individual ownership of property is or 
may be absolute, or nearly so, as between citizens, but is 
always subordinate to the superior ownership of the people, 
and is always conditional, — subject to such conditions as the 
general interests demand. 

Purchasing-power involves the legal right to consume the 
wealth purchased and owned, — a very important law of 
distribution. 

Labor, being any legal effort made to secure an income, 
and the immediate object of labor being income or incoming 
purchasing-power, it follows that the legal wages of labor 
are and always must be purchasing-power, and that all 
purchasing-power or capital acquired by any legal effort 
of a citizen, is the legal wages of his labor. If he inherits 
it, or it is given to him, it is the legal wages acquired 
by the efforts of his predecessor or benefactor ; there- 
fore all capital is the legal wages of labor, The moment 
the fact is realized that capital is the wages of labor, 
and that the laborer, having acquired any portion of it, has 
the right to expend that portion by consuming the wealth it 
commands or represents, it is seen that existing capital must 
always be distributed among that class of citizens who have 
acquired more than they have consumed, and that conse- 
quently there always must be a very large class without 
capital dependent upon the wages of daily labor, acquired 
by using tools and materials, — wealth which they do not 
own, but which is owned either by the people in common or 
by individuals other than the one who does the work. From 
all this it follows, to a certainty, either that capital will and 
should always be very unequally distributed among .citizens, 
a very large proportion of citizens having no more than they 
require to expend for what they consume from day to day, 
or that capital and wealth should not be distributed at all, 
except as required for consumption, but be held in common, 
and all productive industry be conducted by the state, on 
some socialistic or communistic plan. These plans I shall 
not attempt to discuss, but will try to make all discussion of 
them unnecessary, by proving the unequal distribution of 
capital to be right. 



CHAPTER XV. 

WAGES. 

Purchasing- power, or capital, or income, is the legal wages 
and the immediate object of labor, but is not the ultimate or 
real wages of labor, nor its' ultimate or real object. The real 
object of labor is consumption, not accumulation. We accu- 
mulate for the purpose of increasing our income, or to pro- 
vide for future consumption. Only an insane person accu- 
lates simply for the sake of acquiring purchasing- power 
which he never expects to utilize in obtaining what he or 
those he wishes to provide for desire to consume. The real 
wages of labor consist of wealth consumed, — all wealth con- 
sumed by law-abiding citizens. Whenever, in any country, 
capital is so distributed that every citizen secures for his own 
consumption that proportion of all wealth which he has the 
right to consume as the real wages of his labor, then capital, 
in that country, is justly distributed, however the uncon- 
sumed wealth may be owned or held. But it is evident that, 
in all countries in which the laws are enforced, every citizen 
does receive both as legal and as real wages exactly what the 
law declares to be justly his due, — no more, no less ; there- 
fore, unjust distribution is the result of unjust laws, and just 
distribution will be the result of such laws as will secure to 
every citizen the real wages due him as the just reward of 
his labor. 

Legal wages are income, purchasing-power, capital. The 
legal wages of labor are not wealth, but the power to buy 
wealth and the right to consume the wealth bought. The 
real wages of labor are not wealth nor the right to consume 
wealth, but are the utility realized in the consumption of 
wealth. This however must be understood as from the stand- 
point of the receiver of wages. From the standpoint of the 



Wages. 67 

payer (the people) real wages are wealth, — wealth consumed 
by one who labors, as the reward of that labor. Estimating 
wealth by value, real wages are value, or purchasing-power, 
or capital, destroyed by the consumption, or destructive use, 
of assets. 

Under all forms of government, the whole tenure of wealth 
rests on and is determined by law ; and this necessarily 
implies that the highest ownership of wealth is always vested 
in the law-maker, — the sovereign. The ownership, therefore, 
by this law-maker, this sovereign, is absolute in relation to 
subjects, or individuals : that is, the conditions regulating or 
limiting individual ownership depend on the will of the 
sovereign, and are uniformly established by and with the con- 
sent of the sovereign, and consequently in harmony with the 
interests of the sovereign. Whenever it appears to be otherwise, 
it is because the nominal sovereign is not the real sovereign, but 
his will is overruled or subjected to that of a nominal subject, 
who thus, in reality and to the extent involved, is the real 
sovereign, and not the subject. Now, if the sovereignty by 
natural right belongs to the people, the people are, and neces- 
sarily must be, the owner of all wealth, and, as far as indi- 
viduals are concerned, the absolute owner. But the total 
capital of a nation represents its wealth ; its distribution is 
determined by law ; and the will of the people is law. Law, 
however, being simply a definition of natural right, and 
natural rights being superior to legal rights, it follows that 
the rights of the people as sovereign should be harmonized 
with the rights of individuals as subjects, in] the distribution 
of wealth and capital as well as in everything else. 

It is for the interest of the people that every citizen should 
produce as much wealth, estimated by utility, as he con- 
sumes, or more. 

It is the natural right of every citizen to consume exactly 
in proportion to the utility of what he produces ; but, in 
order that labor may be productive, the citizen requires tools 
to work with and materials to work upon. Wealth consists, 
in great part but not exclusively, of the tools, materials and 
products of labor. Without tools and materials, labor cannot 
produce, and the very first condition of just distribution is 
that all citizens should have equal opportunities to make 
their labor productive. 



68 Wages. 

If all men of equal ability and industry obtain equal wages 
as the reward of equal efforts, and if the wages of all men are 
in proportion to the productiveness of their efforts, capital is 
impartially distributed. This is true even if all the accumu- 
lated capital of a country is vested in the few, and the many 
are employed by the few, never having any more capital than 
they receive and expend from day to day. Capital being 
thus impartially distributed, it is further required in the 
interests of the people that the distribution be such that a 
maximum of utility be derived from the labor expended, and 
a maximum of wealth be produced over and above what is 
consumed. 

In every country individuals depend for their opportunities 
to produce, upon having capital of their own, or upon being 
employed by others who have capital. 

Citizens who work for an employer do not use or own the 
capital of their employer : they simply expend labor upon 
wealth which the employer owns and uses. But a citizen 
who obtains from the legal owner of wealth the exclusive 
right to use that wealth, as a house or a horse, or a sum of 
money, for a certain time, becomes the owner of the wealth 
for that time, and the original owner ceases to be the owner 
until the time expires. The value of a house or a horse, is the 
value for all future time, discounted, or capitalized, — being 
estimated as equivalent to the value of a certain sum of money 
in hand ; just as the value of an annuity or a perpetuity is 
discounted, or capitalized, estimating its present value in 
money. The rent of a house, the hire of a horse, or the inter- 
est of money for one year, is the estimated value of that 
house, horse or money, for that year ; — that is, the purchas- 
ing-power its ownership for that year confers upon the owner. 
Thus it becomes evident that a citizen who hires houses, 
horses, money or other assets for a given time, is the owner 
of such assets for that time : — he has capital, or purchasing- 
power, and is a capitalist to the extent involved. 

There is therefore a true distinction between capitalists and 
not-capitalists, — between those who depend for their wages 
upon having capital of their own, and those who depend upon 
being employed by others. The fact that a capitalist may 
owe more than he owns, or that the ownership of property 
may be acquired on credit, does not invalidate the distinc- 



Wages. 69 

tion ; on the contrary, credit is one of the most important 
factors to be considered in the production of capital, or pur- 
chasing- power, and illustrates very clearly how value, or 
capital, can be created without increasing the utility of 
wealth. 

For example, the Goulds, Yanderbilts, Rothschilds and 
Astors could create millions-of-dollars' • worth of property, in 
a few minutes, simply by signing promissory notes. The 
notes would constitute property which could be readily sold 
for money, or exchanged for other property, increasing the 
capital and assets of the country to the full amount of the 
market value of the notes, without necessarily increasing 
the utility of the wealth of the country at all. Each one of 
the notes would be property, and would be wealth ; not 
because it would represent other things, but because it 
could be used or utilized in satisfying the desires of 
mankind, particularly the desire to acquire purchasing- 
power, or capital. The new wealth, or property, thus crea- 
ted, would have value, or confer purchasing-power, or capital, 
which would be a part of the total of capital, — every part of 
this total representing all wealth in proportion to the value 
of the part. In estimating the wealth of the country by 
value, all assets are included, — whether produced by an 
extension of credit or otherwise. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CAPITALIST AND NOT-CAPITALIST. 

Purchasing-power, or capital, being the legal wages of 
labor, and human nature being so constituted that the many 
will, through idleness, improvidence, bad management or mis- 
fortune, consume as much as or more than they produce, while 
the few, being industrious, provident, intelligent and fortu- 
nate, will consume less than they produce, the few will 
always be capitalists and the many not-capitalists. Those 
who are capitalists, will own the tools and materials neces- 
sary to make labor productive, and those who are not capital- 
ists will always depend upon the will of the capitalists for an 
opportunity to labor for wages. 

But hitherto, in all ages, the tendency of capital has been 
to concentrate in the few. The greater the number of small 
capitalists,. the greater is the demand for the labor of the not- 
capitalists, and the higher are the wages earned by the latter 
class. The more capital becomes concentrated, the fewer 
hands capitalists employ, and the lower are the wages of the 
not-capitalists. Small capitalists cannot compete successfully 
with large ones, and so the smaller capitalists gradually come 
to acquire less than they lose or consume, and are reduced 
to the ranks of not-capitalists. Thus every step in the con- 
centration of wealth tends to accelerate that concentration, 
and to reduce the wages of the not-capitalists ; and the 
process, if not checked or modified in some manner, leads 
inevitably to revolution, anarchy, destruction, and the re-dis- 
tribution of whatever wealth remains. Such is the history of 
nations. 

There is but one expedient by which this unjust concentration 
and that violent re-distribution of wealth ever have been or ever 
can be retarded or prevented. This expedient is legal re-dis- 



Capitalist and Not-Capitalist. 71 

tribution, anticipating the bloody and ruinous re-distribution 
which otherwise, sooner or later, inevitably takes place. 

A notable recognition of the necessity of legal re-distribu- 
tion is found in the Bible, in the XXV chapter of Leviticus, 
in the establishment of the year of Jubilee for the liberation 
of bondsmen, the reversion of land, etc. Every war effects a 
partial re-distribution of wealth, by giving employment to the 
poor, taxing capital to pay their wages, and enriching con- 
tractors, speculators, and a host of plunder-seekers, who 
would otherwise remain poor. Every nation which has sur- 
vived a century of peace has been compelled to resort to tax- 
ation, for the purpose of providing for the poor sufficiently 
to keep them comparatively quiet and submissive in their 
degraded condition, and to prevent desperation from driving 
them to rebellion. 

When the rich of any nation are wise enough to see the 
danger and provide against it systematically, as they have 
done in China, the process of monopoly does not go on with 
the unrestricted and threatening rapidity with which it is 
now taking place in the United States. It is checked by legal 
provisions for the employment by the state of large classes of 
not-capitalists ; by laws that secure employment and a mini- 
mum of wages to all able-bodied men who prefer gradual 
starvation and hard work to idleness and sudden death ; by 
various expedients to check the natural increase of popula- 
tion ; by partially relieving the poor from the care of their 
children ; by providing for the support of the aged and 
infirm ; and by occasionally provoking a war with some 
weaker nation, — friend or enemy. 

The treasury of every nation is supplied by the taxation of 
capital, and, when the proceeds of taxation are employed for 
the benefit of the not-capitalists, taxation is virtually a re- 
distribution of the wealth accumulated by capitalists in the 
regular course of industrial or business pursuits. The rich, 
however, nearly always resist every attempt made to tax 
them. As a rule they are opposed to foreign wars, much 
more to civil war. They always oppose the employment of 
what they consider unnecessary labor by the state. Never- 
theless, no nation could ever survive a century of peace, if 
capital were taxed only just enough to carry on government 
economically ; much less would any nation survive a century 



72 Capitalist and Not-Capitalist. 

of peace, if such taxation were made to bear, as it generally 
does, very much more heavily on small than on large capital- 
ists. It is because the rich are compelled to submit to taxa- 
tion to benefit the poor and to provide employment for not- 
capitalists, that governments survive as long as they do. 

If the United States has passed its centennial year, it is 
because its property-holders have been compelled to pay taxes 
for carrying on four considerable wars and several smaller 
ones, and to support a host of state and church officials, pen- 
sioners, paupers, confidence-men, thieves in and out of prison, 
and numberless others who, if the government were conducted 
on strictly "business principles," meaning according to the 
will of capitalists, would have formed a part of what are called 
the "dangerous classes," and would long ere this have over, 
thrown such a government. As it is now, the rich will get 
richer and the poor poorer until a revolution becomes inevita- 
ble, unless partial and continuous re-distribution, by taxing the 
rich for the benefit of the poor, is systematically maintained 
and is sufficient in amount to prevent the increase of the 
" dangerous classes " beyond manageable proportions. It is 
because the existing systems of legal re-distribution are so 
stingily and unsystematically carried on, that every one of 
the several nations which participate largely in what we call 
"modern civilization" is perpetually in danger of violent and 
destructive revolution. Such revolution is always certain to 
take place whenever outraged humanity, driven to despera- 
tion, determines to overthrow the institutions which appear 
to be responsible for the wrongs heaped upon it. If the rich 
were far-sighted in their selfishness, they would, for their own 
security and in their own interests, tax themselves much more 
liberally than they now do to provide employment and better 
wages for the poor. Such a course would secure the loyalty 
of the many, and would increase the efficacy of labor, result- 
ing in the production of more and better wealth than at 
present, — the greater part of which would certainly go to 
increase the store of the rich themselves, benefiting the capi- 
talists as much as or more than the not- capitalists. In the 
interest of humanity, it is to be hoped that the rich will not 
become wiser before the poor learn how to secure their rights, 
and learn also to insist that the rate of taxation shall be just 



Capitalist and Not-Capitalist. 73 

enough to secure to every one his own, and that the proceeds 
of taxation shall be expended intelligently for that purpose. 

The rich, fortunately for themselves, have never been able 
to escape taxation entirely, but have resorted to every pos- 
sible expedient to throw off the burden and make the poor 
carry it ; — to throw taxes off of the owner or monopolist of 
wealth on to the producer or consumer of wealth ; off of pur- 
chasing-power accumulated or held, the capital of the capi- 
talist, on to in- coming-purchasing-power, or income, or 
wages ; off of wealth and on to industry. 

While, for convenience or brevity, we speak of taxing 
capital or assets, we mean always that the citizen is taxed in 
proportion to his capital or to the value of his assets ; or 
sometimes, as taxes are laid at present, in proportion to a 
quantity or according to a kind of asset owned by him. 
Legal wages, income and capital are identically the same 
thing. The daily wages, so called in common discourse, paid 
to the not- capitalist by his employer, generally in the form 
of money, sometimes in other forms, are not in themselves 
wages, but are certificates of purchasing-power, — tokens rep- 
resenting the increments of capital earned by the not-capital- 
ist, and it is these increments, not the tokens, that constitute, 
his legal wages. If, instead of expending his capital from 
day to day, he saves it, — reserves it, accumulates it, — he 
becomes a capitalist ; and, assuming the laws to be just, the 
accumulated capital is" his own absolutely as far as the people 
are concerned. The right of the people to exchange the form 
of certificate, when the general interest demands such an 
exchange, is not a right to deprive him of his capital. If he, 
in any legal manner, increases his capital, all the capital 
acquired is as absolutely his own as were the first increments 
earned by him when a not-capitalist. Being his, as against 
the people, the people have no right to deprive him of it 
without due compensation, either by taxing it, taxing him 
on account of it, or in any other manner. Just money held 
by a citizen represents capital pure and simple, is simply a 
certificate that, to the extent involved, the holder is a capi- 
talist. The people therefore have no right to tax the owner 
of just money because of that ownership. To tax capital is 
to tax income, is to tax wages. The people can have no right 

to tax capital nor to tax the capitalist on account of his capi- 

10 



74 Capitalist and Not-Capitalist. 

tal. An advalorem tax on assets is technically not a tax on 
either assets or capital, bnt is a tax on the owner or holder 
of assets in proportion to the value of his assets, — is a tax, 
not on, nor on account of, purchasing-power, but in propor- 
tion to purchasing-power. 

A unit of capital is a unit of credit, — credit had by the 
individual with the people ; it is a unit of public indebted^ 
ness, — the indebtedness of the people to the individual. 
Assuming the name of the unit to be dollar and the symbol $, 
to say that the capital of an individual is $1000 is equivalent 
to saying that the people owe the individual $1000 ; and 
assets, in the hands of individuals, are certificates of such 
indebtedness held by individuals and honored by the people. 
But, the holder of assets owes rent, the rent of the assets, to 
the people, and is thereby made debtor to the people. If 
taxed in proportion to the value of his assets, the individual 
pays his indebtedness to the people by surrendering the evi- 
dence of their indebtedness to him ; that is, he relinquishes 
as many units (dollars) of his credit with the people as he 
owes units (dollars) of rent to the people. In paying his 
taxes he relinquishes capital, which is his, as an equivalent 
for the use of assets which belong, to the people. The right 
of the people to tax citizens does not involve, nor in any 
degree imply, a right to deprive any citizen of capital or of 
any thing else which is his. The right to tax is simply the 
right of the people to exact or recover that which belongs to 
the people. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

NATURAL RENT. 

If property be taxed advalorem, — that is, if every citizen 
be taxed exactly in proportion to the wealth monopolized by 
him, — he will be taxed exactly in proportion to his power to 
acquire capital unjustly ; that is to say, if the wages of capi- 
talists are too great, they are too great exactly in proportion 
to the value of their assets, and the wages of not- capitalists 
are too small in exactly the proportion that capital is unjustly 
monopolized ; and an advalorem tax on assets, collected from 
capitalists and expended in increasing the opportunities of 
not-capitalists, if right in amount, would so reduce the wages 
of the former and increase the wages of the latter that each 
class would receive precisely the wages it is justly entitled to. 

Such a tax would have the effect of promoting the produc- 
tion of wealth in two ways : first, the capitalist, in order to 
consume the same as he would if not so taxed, would have 
to make a more active use of his wealth, or purchasing- 
power ; and, second, by giving more and better employment 
to the not-capitalists, many of the latter would become capi- 
talists, and all of them would have more to consume. 

It appears to me that this method of securing just wages 
for all, — capitalists and not-capitalists, — is the road, and the 
only road, to just distribution. 

The reason that the regular advalorem tax should be equal 
in per cent, to the death rate, is that the rent of any and all 
kinds of property is exactly what the users of that property 
produce over and above what they consume ; and therefore 
the natural rent of all the wealth of a nation is exactly what 
individuals leave at death. The average death-rate in thirty- 
three cities of the United States, in the year 1879, was 20^ 
in one thousand ; and, in the year 1880, it was 22^-, or a lit- 



76 Natural Rent. 

tie over two per cent. That an advalorem tax on assets could 
be so disposed as to effect a just distribution of capital has 
been made evident. 

Let us contemplate some of the inevitable effects of such 
a tax. 

Property would be bought, sold and exchanged, exactly as 
at present, but would always be found in the hands of citi- 
zens who would make the best use of it, and who would pay 
to the people, as the collective and superior owner, the highest 
rent for it. ihus a maximum of utility would be secured to 
the people, in the natural rent of all wealth. The value of 
the wealth consumed by every citizen, — that is, his real 
wages, — would be in exact proportion to the value of the 
wealth produced by him, and all citizens would have equal 
opportunities of the right kind. The capital of the country, 
consisting of the purchasing-power conferred by the owner- 
ship of all unconsumed wealth, would be distributed in such 
a manner that every citizen would have exactly what he had 
economized, or saved of his legal wages, except only what 
had been given or bequeathed to him ; and his legal wages 
would correspond with the importance, merit, or utility of 
his services, as well as with their value. The total of capital, 
representing exactly the total of wealth, the distribution of 
both would be as perfect as possible. It is evident that, 
under such circumstances, all legislation would be directed 
to promote the general welfare, and any defects in the laws 
relating to the production of wealth would soon be detected 
and rectified. 

By this method of distribution and re-distribution the not- 
capitalist would be made better-off than he could possibly be 
by any other method, because, not only would his real wages 
be exactly in proportion to his production, but his opportu- 
nities to produce would be the best possible. The not-capi- 
talist is the one who will always, if possible, consume, lose 
or destroy, more than he produces, and who, under any 
other system, would consume, lose or destroy, the very tools 
and materials upon which he depends for making his labor 
productive, and would thereafter be compelled to work more 
for less wages, producing more wealth for others than for 
himself. Under this system, every citizen, capitalist or not- 
capitalist, would realize and enjoy, fully and perfectly, with- 



Natukal Rent. 77 

out break or intermission, a natural and just equivalent for 
his natural, indefeasible, equal right to use or utilize, or own, 
all wealth. 

The price of production is consumption. The excess of pro- 
duction over consumption, loss and destruction, when there is 
an excess, is the gain or profit of the people, or the natural rent 
due to the people collectively as the just price for the use of 
the common property held by individuals. Under the pre- 
vailing system of distribution this natural rent, gain, or profit, 
is retained by the capitalist, who is thus enabled to consume 
very much more than he has a natural right to, while the 
not-capitalist, being deprived of the opportunities to produce 
to which he is by natural right entitled, produces less than 
he ought ; and, being always at the mercy of the capitalist, 
he suffers from extortion through being compelled by neces- 
sity to make unjust contracts, and is therefore credited with 
producing less than he really does produce. He obtains less 
money for the products of his labor than the capitalist does 
for the same or similar products ; he buys less than the capi- 
talist does with the same number of dollars ; and therefore 
he is only permitted to consume a part even of what he is 
credited with producing. 

At present, the production of wealth, as estimated by util- 
ity, is very much less than it should be, and of the wealth 
produced the capitalist consumes very much more, and the 
not-capitalist very much less, than he has a natural right to. 
With just distribution, the capitalist, being compelled to pay 
the natural rent, or gain, or profit, — the advalorem tax,— 
that rent would be distributed among citizens, indirectly but 
equally, in the form of increased or renewed opportunities ; 
production would thereby be stimulated ; every citizen would 
be enabled to work in the most advantageous manner, and 
would receive exactly the wages he would be justly entitled to. 

Exchanges being incidental to production, they are of 
course included in the latter ; but, to facilitate exchanges 
and provide a money that should not be taxed, just money 
would have to be created. 

To understand just money, it is necessary to observe that, 
under the system of just distribution which has been described, 
as well as under any sovereignty or government whatever, 
purchasing-power, or capital, not property, or wealth, is the 



78 Natural Rent. 

legal wages of labor, though, in common discourse, the intan- 
gible power is confounded with the tangible substance. Legal 
wages are value ; real wages are utility. The individual 
right is a right to purchase and consume wealth, but is not a 
right to hold wealth. Hence the sovereign of any country 
allows citizens or subjects to hold wealth or property, not as 
an individual right, but as an evidence or certificate of the 
legal right to purchasing-power. This being true, it is evi- 
dently true, also, that the people, as sovereign, may, at their 
convenience, substitute one certificate of purchasing-power 
for another ; and it is also evident that legalized purchasing- 
power, in an individual, implies that he has the right to con- 
sume of the wealth of the people a quantity corresponding in 
value to his purchasing-power, — or what is the same thing, 
the people owe him as many dollars' worth of wealth as he 
has units of purchasing-power. Therefore the wealth, prop- 
erty, or assets, owned by an individual, are an evidence of 
debt, — a debt due the individual by the people ; that, and 
nothing more nor less. Evidently, then, the number of units 
of purchasing-power to which any individual is entitled be- 
ing known, and, assuming that one dollar is the unit, a paper 
certificate, issued by the government, to the effect that the 
government owes the citizen his known number of dollars, is, 
in the hands of the citizen, exactly the legal evidence of 
purchasing-power to which he is entitled. If the ownership 
of such certificates does really confer the purchasing power 
certified to, the individual holds everything he has any right 
to demand of the government or claim as his own ; that is, 
the individual can own no property which the government 
has not a perfect right to demand of him in exchange for such 
paper certificates. If such certificates are used as the money 
of the country, the citizen has in them representatives of 
the legal wages of labor in the very form and substance which 
it is the immediate object of all labor to secure, because of 
the superlatively generalized purchasing-power their owner- 
ship confers. Bank of England notes, United States Bank 
notes, or any other legalized forms of paper currency, are ex- 
actly such certificates of purchasing-power and evidences of 
public or government indebtedness, except that their value is 
fluctuating. Every such bill issued is a debt assumed by 
the government, whether the government does or does not 



Natural Kent. 79 

formally and fully guarantee to redeem the bills if the bank 
fails to do so. The government does really guarantee them 
when it legalizes their circulation and allows them to go to 
the people as money. But if the true character of such bills 
had appeared on their face, they would always have borne 
something like the following inscription : — 

"The government owes the bearer one dollar, but will or 
will not, as the case may be, pay the debt if the bank fails. 
This bill is an evidence that somebody has paid the bank one 
dollar which the government has never received. It is an 
evidence of the stupidity of the sovereign in allowing its gov- 
ernment to be cheated out of the use of one dollar, by the 
bank which issued this bill, for the whole time the bank con- 
tinues solvent and the bill in circulation ; and in allowing the 
holder to lose the dollar if the bank fails and the government 
does not pay the debt. But more than all else is this bill a 
certificate of the stupidity of the sovereign, in allowing the 
supply of money to be controlled by banks, which thereby 
have the public and the sovereign at their mercy, through 
the control of all the values, purchasing-power, or capital, 
of the country, making the just distribution of wealth im- 
possible, the sovereign a cripple, and liberty a delusive 
dream." 

To make a perfect money, the government, not the banks, 
should issue the certificates of sovereign indebtedness; should 
pay them out in exchange for an equal number of dollars' 
worth, or for other evidences of debt ; that is, the govern 
ment should issue them by paying its debts with them ; the 
government should issue just enough and no more than 
enough of them to supply the existing demand at a fixed and 
invariable value, — should issue just so many that the purchas- 
ing-power conferred by the ownership of any given number of 
dollars would be always the same. 

Such money, being perfect, would be just money. Having 
thus described it, I so name it. 

One dollar of just money in the hands of a citizen is an 
asset, is property, is wealth ; and the purchasing-power its 
ownership confers is capital. It differs from all other prop- 
erty in that its value never fluctuates, and in that it is exclu- 
sively the evidence and measure of a debt of the people to 
the holder. Its tangible substance, being of paper, is practi- 



80 Natueal Kent. 

cally valueless, and any and all other qualtities or character- 
istics it may have are accidental or incidental to the only one 
that is of any account, — namely, that of being an evidence 
of public indebtedness and of a certain definite amount of 
that indebtedness ; whereas, all other assets consist of or 
represent something more than or different from public in- 
debtedness. This difference between just money and all 
or any other species of property is very important indeed, 
and should exempt the former from the otherwise uniform 
advalorem tax on assets, because the right of the people to 
tax assets is based not simply on the fact that all men have an 
equal right to use all assets, but more specifically on the fact 
that when one citizen owns any asset, whether he uses it or 
not, he, by holding it, prevents others from using it, and 
therefore deprives the people collectively of that which be- 
longs to them, — that is, of the value of the asset for the time 
he holds it. The annual advalorem tax is the price for one 
year of the asset so held ; it is, the price set and agreed to 
between the people and the citizen as an equivalent for the 
use of the asset for one year ; it is, the value to the people of 
the asset for one year. Evidently, if a citizen holds an asset 
and does not pay the tax, the people are the losers to the 
amount of the tax. If he holds the asset and does not use 
it, and pays the tax, he is the loser to the amount of the tax 
directly, though indirectly he may find such holding profita- 
ble. For a citizen to hold an asset which he does not use in- 
volves the loss of the value of the asset, as that value is esti- 
mated by the people, for the whole time the asset is so held. 
If a citizen can add to his income by so holding assets, it is 
just and desirable that he should do so, provided he pays the 
tax: otherwise the people are unjustly made to suffer loss. 
All assets except just money are valuable to the people 
collectively, because the supply of such assets is limited and 
is less than the demand. Atmospheric air is not an asset, 
because it has no value, — because the demand for it is met 
everywhere by a superabundant supply. Just money is an 
asset, because it is valuable to the individual owner, and it is 
valuable because each citizen individually desires to obtain 
all he can of it, and because the supply is so controlled by the 
people that labor or effort is always required to obtain any 
quantity of it. The supply is such that the value is invaria- 



Natural Rent. 81 

bly maintained ; that is, does not fluctuate ; is not permitted 
to fluctuate except as the pressure of steam fluctuates in a 
closely watched boiler, where every appliance is provided for 
maintaining a uniform or invariable pressure. 

If a citizen holds and refrains from using his own just money, 
he actually confers a benefit on the people, because the peo- 
ple are thereby enabled to use a quantity of wealth equal in 
value to the money so held or hoarded, which wealth the 
citizen would otherwise hold instead of holding the money. 

Just money differs essentially from all money, paper or 
what not, ever heretofore known or used, in that just so much 
of it is issued, or continues in circulation, as will maintain a 
uniform or invariable value ; and it is this peculiarity which 
will make the hoarding of just money perfectly harmless 
and even beneficial to the people, and will exempt such 
money from taxation. Any other kind of money, whether 
of paper or metal, must necessarily fluctuate in value with 
the inevitable irregularities of supply and demand, and have 
value to the people both collectively and individually, like 
all other assets, quite independent of its use as a certificate of 
purchasing- power ; and consequently, like all other assets, it 
should be taxed 

There is only one reliable method of ascertaining the value of 
assets, and that method consists essentially in making the 
owner tell. Let every citizen be required by law to make 
known his assets. For example, let him formally describe 
and enumerate them in a written schedule, to be delivered to 
the proper official on the first day of every year ; and let him 
in the same instrument indicate and declare the value to him 
of each asset, by setting a price for each, expressed in money 
units, — the price of each several one being exactly the sum 
of money he is willing to accept in exchange for it. Let the 
citizen be taxed according to such valuation of his assets, 
and let it be known that he will be compelled to accept the 
prices thus fixed, if such prices are offered to him. He will 
be sure not to make the said prices too low, for the purpose 
of avoiding taxation ; neither will he make them too high, 
because the price is in every case that upon which he is will- 
ing to pay the tax, rather than forfeit the asset. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

JUST MONEY. 

It is convenient to call the money- unit one dollar, and a 
one-hundredth part of that unit one cent, and to use the 
term dollar to indicate either the property or asset, common- 
ly termed a dollar, or the purchasing-power, or capital, the 
ownership of that asset confers. 

When we say that the value of an asset is one dollar we 
mean that the purchasing-power conferred by the ownership 
of the asset is equal to that conferred by the ownership of one 
dollar in money ; that is, one unit of purchasing-power. We 
estimate purchasing- power by comparing the value of the 
asset to the value of a dollar in money. To create a just dol- 
lar, which would have an absolutely invariable value, it would 
be necessary to have some fixed measure of value to which 
the value of money could be made invariably to conform ; 
but value, capital, purchasing-power, is the result of con- 
stantly changing relations between wealth and its owners, 
and the value of any one asset must always be more or less 
affected by that of every other : consequently it is simply 
impossible that any one asset can have absolutely the same 
value, or an invariable value for any two consecutive seconds 
of time. Nevertheless, the nature of value being perfectly 
understood, it is not difficult to create dollars the value of 
which will, for all practical purposes, be invariable. 

In ordinary, peaceful times, when nothing seems to disturb 
the normal relations of wealth and labor, we become accus- 
tomed to consider the relative value of money and wealth as 
identical with their real or absolute value ; that is, we say, 
when general prices have advanced, that merchandise has 
increased in value, because it takes more money to buy the 
same quantity of merchandise than it did before the advance ; 
and we say, also, for the same reason, that the value of money 
has decreased. 



Just Money. 83 

If this were true, and the treasurer of any nation which 
used its treasury-notes as money should watch general prices, 
and put in circulation or withdraw from circulation just 
enough of that money to keep general prices always the same, 
the money would have an invariable value. If general prices 
were seen to advance, showing that money was relatively 
abundant, the treasurer could, by selling government bonds, 
or in some other manner, withdraw just sufficient money 
from circulation to stop the advance in prices. If, on the 
other hand, the treasurer should observe that general prices 
were declining, he could, by calling in the bonds, put just 
enough money into circulation again to stop that decline. 
It can easily be understood that, in this way, the treasurer 
of a nation could perfectly adjust the relative value of money 
and merchandise, provided only that he had sufficient money 
in reserve to be used when required for the purpose ; and 
that, as compared with general merchandise, money would 
then have an invariable value, exactly as, by other but simi- 
lar processes, the several kinds of money now in circulation 
in the United States, (in 1883), are made to have an invariable 
value as compared with gold. 

If the government of the United States should issue paper 
certificates of purchasing-power, to be used as money, and 
demonetise everything else, and regulate the value of such 
certificates by the value of all other assets, or by the value of 
the most substantial part of such assets, a money would be 
thus provided the value of which, as compared with the value 
of the assets, would be invariable. In normal times, such 
money, though not a perfect money, would be much better 
than any we have ever had. The present currency of the 
United States is said to be based on gold. In similar lan- 
guage the currency we have just described would be based 
on assets. 

It is not enough, however, that money and merchandise 
should have an invariable relative value ; that is, an invaria- 
ble value as compared with each other ; it is also necessary 
that value should have a certain relation to utility, — should 
correspond as nearly as possible with utility. In other words, 
it is desirable that the value of wealth should increase and 
decrease as nearly as possible with the utility of wealth. It 
is an undisputed axiom in political economy that the value 



84 Just Money. 

of anything depends upon the desire to possess it and the 
difficulty of obtaining it. Now a dollar of invariable value 
would be one that it would always cost the same quantity of 
labor or effort to obtain ; for the intensity of our desires is 
correctly measured by the quantity of effort we are willing to 
expend in satisfying them. With a currency based on assets, 
although the relative value of money and merchandise would 
be always the same, the absolute value of both would fluctu- 
ate with every change in the proportion of wealth to popula- 
tion. Every increase in that proportion would make both 
the dollars and the wealth they would buy more abundant, 
more easily obtained and therefore less valuable. In the 
opposite direction, also, every decrease in the proportion of 
wealth to population would make both the dollars and the 
wealth they would buy more valuable, because more labor or 
effort would be required to obtain them. Evidently, in order 
that one dollar may have an absolutely invariable value, it is 
necessary that the difficulty of obtaining it should be always 
the same. Or, to present the same thing in another light, the 
owner of one dollar should be able to pay for as much labor 
with his dollar at any one time, as at any other time, in order 
that the dollar should always have the same invariable 
value. 

The value of the money-unit, on any given working- day 
in the United States, could be ascertained with scientific pre- 
cision if it were possible to find out how many hours' work 
were done in the country on that day, and exactly how many 
dollars were paid for that work. The average quantity of 
labor devoted to earning a dollar would determine the value 
of a dollar on that day, because the labor expended measures 
both the desire to possess and the difficulty of obtaining a 
thing, and the average quantity of labor expended by citizens 
in earning a dollar is the natural measure both of the value 
of the dollar and the value of the wealth it will purchase. 

But the labor of not- capitalists should alone be considered 
in regulating the value of money ; because, although every 
legal effort to acquire an income is labor, and all income is 
the legal wages of labor, and the wealth consumed by citizens 
is the real wages of labor, nevertheless it is the kind of labor 
performed by not-capitalists which gives utility to wealth 
and gives a desirable basis to value. The acquiring of income 



Just Money. 85 

by a capitalist, as such, requires efforts comparatively slight, 
and of a different kind from those expended by the not-capi- 
talist. 

The capitalist, though necessarily considered to be a pro- 
ducer of wealth, inasmuch as wealth is estimated by value, 
would perhaps, if wealth were estimated by utility, not prove 
to be a producer at all. That is, capitalists acquire wealth 
by speculating in, manipulating and increasing the value of 
wealth, rather than by increasing the utility of wealth : there- 
fore, to check the divergence between the utility and the value 
of wealth, to make value represent utility and at the same 
time to keep the value of a dollar invariable, the dollar should 
always pay for the same quantity of the labor of not- 
capitalists. 

As an example of how the labor of the capitalist produces 
value, let us suppose that a certain railroad has been created 
by the labor of not- capitalists ; that the net earnings and 
prospects of the road, and the financial condition of the com- 
pany are such that the stock is well worth $80 per share ; 
that it is selling for that price ; that a very rich capitalist 
sets his agents to buying for him, not only all the shares in 
the market but all that any responsible parties will agree to 
deliver to him at some time in the near future ; that the 
whole number of shares in existence is 100,000; that the 
capitalist succeeds in buying just 200,000, thus securing all 
the stock and having responsible parties under obligation to 
deliver as much more to him at $80 per share. Evidently 
such an enterprising capitalist could exact his own price for 
the 100,000 shares of stock that his victims would have to 
buy of him in order to deliver. He would consider himself 
very obliging indeed if he were "induced to part with it" 
for less than $160 per share ; but at that price, his labor 
would have produced value to the amount of $8,000,000. 
With a slight effort, — very little labor, — he would have 
doubled the value of the stock ; and, if we are to estimate 
wealth by value, he would have added $8,000,000, to the 
wealth of the country. But, if we are to estimate wealth by 
its utility, he would certainly find it very difficult to prove 
that he had been a producer in that transaction. The reader 
knows that it is through such "labor" and "production" 
as this that the wealth of the United States is so rapidly con- 



86 Just Money. 

centra ting in the hands of a few of onr most " talented 
workingmen." 

Of not- capitalists, those who receive the highest wages 
are, as a rule, indebted to something other than their own 
superior industry, ability and effort, for a part of the wages 
they receive ; and, consequently, in estimating the value of 
money, their wages cannot be considered simply as the price 
of the wealth they produce. 

In view of what has now been said, it appears to me that, 
in the United States, just money could be created in the man- 
ner indicated in the following articles : 

Article 1. On or. before the 10th day of every month, let 
every person in the United States who employs others, make 
in writing a true statement, on a blank form provided by the 
government for the purpose, of the number of persons em- 
ployed by him during the preceding month ; the wages per 
hour paid to each person so employed ; and the wages paid 
per hour for the same kind of work during the month pre- 
ceding the one above mentioned. On the same day, or the 
day after that on which the said written statement is prepared, 
let it be mailed to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United 
States. 

Article 2. The Secretary of the Treasury shall leave out 
of consideration one-fourth part of the number of persons so 
employed and reported in the several statements provided for 
in Article 1st, which fourth part shall consist of those receiv- 
ing the highest wages per hour ; and he shall ascertain, as 
soon as possible, the average wages per hour received by the 
other three-fourths part, and shall consider that average to 
have been the average wages per hour of the corresponding 
month ; and he shall compare that average with the average 
of the month preceding that, and thereby ascertain whether 
wages per hour are increasing or decreasing, and at what 
rate per cent. ; and on every month thereafter the Secretary 
shall in like manner ascertain the average of wages per hour 
and the rate of increase or decrease for the preceding month. 

Article 3. The Secretary shall from time to time increase 
the quantity of money in circulation, but shall never, under 
any circumstances whatever, withdraw from circulation 
enough to decrease the average rate of wages. Whenever the 
Secretary shall observe a decrease in the average rate of 



Just Money. 87 

wages, he shall immediately add to the quantity of money in 
circulation so much as shall appear to be required to restore 
the highest average rate of wages that had at any time been 
observed after the first monthly statements had been made. 
The purpose which the Secretary shall have always in view 
will be to issue just enough currency to prevent the average 
of wages from being for any two consecutive months below 
the highest point at any time reached ; but not enough to 
cause any greater advance in wages, at any time, than shall 
appear to be necessary or incidental to this method of pre- 
venting a decline in wages. 

By thus regulating or controlling the value of the money- 
unit, a dollargWould be created which would at all times pay 
for an equal quantity of the most desirable kinds of labor- 
products, the quantity of such labor-products being estimat- 
ed, not by weight, or bulk, but by the quantity of useful 
labor required to produce them. 

Such a dollar would constitute the nearest possible approxi- 
mation to a dollar of invariable value. The creation and 
employment of such money by the people would have a very 
important and beneficial influence on both the production and 
distribution of wealth, and would be just money. 

If, with such money in use, it should be observed, at any- 
time, that capitalists were acquiring capital too easily or 
accumulating it too rapidly in proportion to the wages of 
not-capitalists, an increase in the rate per cent, of the adval- 
orem tax on assets would very soon correct that injustice. 
If, on the contrary, it should be observed that economy and 
abstinence were not sufficiently rewarded or encouraged, 
the rate of the tax could be decreased accordingly. 

The notes, bills, tokens, or certificates, constituting the 
tangible, visible, corporate part of just money may be, in 
general appearance, and in the number of dollars, or fractions 
of a dollar that each constitutes or represents, like the Na- 
tional and bank currency with which we are so familiar, or 
the notes may have any other suitable form and appearance. 
What is or what is not expressed on the face or back of the 
note, further than to make known that it is money, and how 
much money it is, is a matter of no consequence whatever, 
because the law to which it will owe its existence will deter- 



88 Just Money. 

mine its nature, and that nature will assert itself whether or 
not a description is printed on each bill. 

The one-dollar note will be a certificate that the owner or 
bearer is entitled to one unit of purchasing- power, debt- 
paying-power, or capital ; a legal tender for the payment of 
any debt of one dollar he may owe or contract ; a certificate 
that the people owe him the legal right to consume whatever 
he can buy with the dollar. 

Just money will be the only money recognized by law ; 
the only standard by which the value of other things can be 
legally estimated ; the only term in which any quantity 
of value, capital, purchasing-power, debt paying-power, 
debits or credits can be legally stated. Just money 
will always be found by anybody having assets to offer 
in exchange for it. If any of it leaves the country, 
hides away, is hoarded, or is lost, so much clear gain to the 
people. Neither its abundance, its scarcity, nor its value, 
can be interfered with or unsettled while the law remains in 
force and the Secretary of the national treasury does his duty. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

RATIONAL TARIFF. 

Primitive humanity, or humanity in the savage state, is, 
socially, in its most disintegrated condition. "Every man 
for himself" is the necessary law, making selfishness the 
virtue of savagism, except to the extent that selfishness in 
the savage is modified by the natural instinct to provide for 
his mate or his progeny. 

Experience soon teaches the savage that " union is 
strength," either for offensive or defensive purposes, and the 
process of integration or crystalization begins with the 
formation of tribes or communities, which in process of time 
consolidate into states and nations, large and small. At the 
present time nearly all the earth's surface is divided among 
the several nations, each nation claiming as exclusively its own 
the portion allotted to it. 

Patriotism is, from the stand point of national interests, 
what selfishness is to the savage. Selfishness, in the savage, 
impels him to grasp at anything which he thinks will benefit 
himself, without a thought as to the rights of others ; and 
patriotism, in a nation, impels that nation to take care of its 
own interests without regard to the interests of other nations. 

Exactly as, and for the very same reason that, individuals 
have united to form small tribes and communities which have 
grown and consolidated into states and nations, so will all 
nations finally become united in one, "The Universal Repub- 
lic," under the sovereignty of the people. The Universal 
Republic is at present impracticable, in exactly the same 
sense, and for the same reason, that it is always impractica- 
ble for humanity, at any stage of its developement, to do that 
which requires more knowledge, skill, experience and appli- 
ances than humanity is at that stage possessed of. 
12 



90 Rational Taeiff. 

While nations continue to maintain their political inde- 
pendence, patriotism will be considered a virtue, and every 
nation will seek its own agrandizement without any very 
scrupulous regard for the welfare of other nations. Such 
being the rule governing the policy of the several nations, 
any one nation that would make itself an exception, by 
attempting a more unselfish policy, would be injured, and 
perhaps destroyed, by the more unscrupulous. No nation 
can safely rely on simply defensive operations or measures 
to protect its own, nor can it afford to be generous or liberal 
in its dealings with other nations, beyond the degree which 
the general policy and practice of nations at the time per- 
mit. Nevertheless, in the affairs of nations, as in the affairs 
of individuals, an enlightened patriotism in the former, as an 
enlightened selfishness in the latter, will discover that the 
welfare of each depends on the general welfare, and will gov- 
ern itself accordingly. 

As long as the several nations, as a rule, enact such laws 
relating to international commerce as seem to each one the 
best for itself, without regard to the interests of others, self 
protection will make it necessary for each nation to conform 
very nearly to that rule. If the general policy is faulty, all 
will be likely to suffer thereby, however much the stronger 
and more fortunate may appear to prosper at the expense of 
their rivals and competitors. 

We have seen, in our discussion of revenue, that no nation 
can justly impose a duty on either imports or exports simply 
for the purpose of obtaining a revenue from its citizens. It 
may, however, impose such duties as a means of obtaining a 
revenue from other nations, if such a patriotic proceeding 
is otherwise justifiable ; or duties may be justly imposed, 
when necessary, as an expedient for regulating foreign com- 
merce, in which case the " incidental revenue" would be by 
no means objectionable. 

Free trade between nations means the abolition of all duties, 
whether on exports or imports,— that exchanges of tangible 
and transportable articles of value between the several nations 
should be as free from restrictions of any kind as are such ex- 
changes now between the several states of the American 
Union. Free trade is justifiable only when such a union ex- 
ists, and will be justifiable between nations only when nation- 



Rational Tariff. 91 

al independence is abolished in the establishment of the 
Universal Republic. Free trade would enrich the wealthy 
and governing classes of thickly populated and old countries, 
like England, at the expense and to the serious injury of the 
inhabitants of more thinly populated and new countries, like 
the United States It would tend to concentrate the wealth 
of the world in the most densely populated centers, and 
place it in the hands of the few, while the masses of all coun- 
tries would rapidly be reduced to a dead level of poverty and 
degradation. Free trade, by drawing the natural, material, 
tangible, basic elements of wealth from nations like those of 
America and Afiica, where such elements most abound and 
labor is comparatively scarce, to the older nations of Europe, 
where such elements are comparatively scarce and labor 
cheap and abundant, would cause the wealth of the world to 
concentrate in the European centers of population. More- 
over, the existing methods of distribution in the several na- 
tions would place the wealth of each nation in the hands of 
the few. The raw materials, or natural elements of wealth, 
received by the old from the new nations, would be improved 
and modified by the labor of the European many, for the 
benefit of the European few, while the nations of Africa and 
America would be reduced to the condition of impoverished 
and servile agriculturalists, miners, and the like. In short 
all other than European nations, ignoring Asia and Russia, 
would, after a few generations of unrestricted free trade, and 
with the present laws of distribution, have about the same re- 
lation to European nations that Ireland now has to England. 
Free trade being impracticable or undesirable, restrictions 
are necessary. Free trade is objectionable to everybody but 
the aristocracy of Europe, because free trade would draw off 
to Europe the natural wealth of other nations, and return 
much less to them than it would take away. That part of 
all wealth which is the object of international commerce con- 
sists of material elements or things, improved or not improv- 
ed by labor. New countries, so called, are, generally speak- 
ing, those which have large^ quantities of the unimproved 
material elements in proportion to the number of inhabitants. 
Old countries, so called, are those in which the natural supply 
of the unimproved material elements of transportable wealth 
have become scarce in proportion to the number of inhabi- 



92 Rational Takiff. 

tants. Free trade would draw off the natural elements from 
the new countries, and bring back in exchange a part only of 
the quantity exported, — this part being improved by cheap 
labor. Evidently this process would rapidly and surely ex- 
haust the supply of the natural material elements in the new 
countries, and therewith destroy their ability to buy manu- 
factured' wealth from the old countries, leaving the new 
countries poverty-stricken and powerless. It is claimed by 
the advocates of free trade that as soon as " raw materials " 
should become scarce, manufactories would start up in the 
new countries, and the things required would be produced at 
home, because they could then be produced more cheaply 
than they could be imported. But experience completely 
refutes this theory, owing to the fact that the business of ex- 
porting natural wealth, — the products of the forests, mines 
and soil, — is, while unrestricted, so much more inviting to 
whatever of capital exists in a new country, that no other 
business is engaged in while there is any thing left to export. 
Owing also to the fact that capitalists, who accumulate wealth 
in that way, find it much more agreeable to spend their for- 
tunes in the old than in the new countries, which they have 
contributed their efforts to impoverish, they go to Europe to 
spend their money. Therefore it would always happen that, 
with unrestricted free frade, the mines, forests, and lands of new 
countries would finally become exhausted, and the country 
be abandoned, as are exhausted mining regions in our day. 
Or, if the soil were so inexhaustibly fertile, and the climate so 
propitious, as to defy the stupid and selfish greed and inge- 
nuity of men, in their efforts to make the earth uninhabitable, 
an agricultural population would remain, which free trade 
could no farther impoverish ; and they would be prosperous 
or miserable, according to the fertility of the soil, their dis- 
tance from the centers of population, and the character of 
their government. 

The wealth exported is always the price of the wealth im- 
ported ; and, with free trade, exports and imports would be 
equal in value : — except that, as a country gets poor, its 
wealthy citizens abandon it, and take their wealth with them ; 
and except, also, that the most valuable kinds of wealth, 
like gold and precious stones, are sent out of a country when- 
ever war or revolution threatens, and the goods exported in 



Rational Tariff. 93 

such times are sold in foreign countries, and neither money 
nor goods are imported in their place ; and except again, 
that the cost of transportation absorbs a considerable percen- 
tage of the value of the goods transported from one country 
to another, which percentage may affect the "balance of 
trade" considerably, one way or the other. Ignoring these 
exceptions, and assuming that exports and imports are equal 
in value, even then, with free trade, a new country 
would be getting poorer every day in those basic and most 
essential elements of wealth which are generally referred to as 
natural elements. The value of the several articles exported 
represents their relative importance or desirability and scarci- 
ty among other nations, and consequently represents the pur- 
chasing-power or capital of the new nations, — that is, the 
ability of the new nations to buy of the old. 

The value of the several articles imported by a nation rep- 
resents their comparative utility or usefulness to that nation. 
Exports are important exactly in proportion to their value, 
while imports are important in proportion to their utility or 
usefulness rather than to their value. 

The most direct and natural restriction that a rationally- 
governed new country would impose on foreign commerce, 
would be one that would check the quantity of exports in 
such a way that their value would be less than the value of 
the imports. 

Uniform advalorem duties on exports would be exactly the 
kiod of check and restriction required for this purpose. If 
the duty on exports were forty-one per cent, advalorem, old 
nations would only buy of the new nations such things as 
were worth in money forty-one per cent, more to the old than 
to the new nation, and citizens of the new nation would have 
the satisfaction and advantage of buying such things nearly 
thirty per cent, cheaper than the citizens of old nations could ; 
that is, the citizens of the old nation would pay $1.4L for 
what could be bought by citizens of the new nation for $1.00. 

The effect of the export duty would be to increase in 
foreign countries, the price of the articles exported, and to 
cheapen the same articles at home, and also to decrease the 
quantity exported ; but articles exported by new countries 
are things of prime necessity to old countries, while articles 
exported by old countries are things which new countries can 



94 Rational Tariff. 

produce themselves or do very well without : therefore old 
countries would continue to buy largely of new countries 
whatever the export duties might be, and it would never be 
for the interests of the European aristocracy to impose a 
similar duty on their exports, and they would be compelled 
to sell cheap and buy dear. 

If all nations should resort to the same kind of a tariff, — 
that is, should impose an advalorem duty on all exports and 
no duties on imports, — international commerce would un- 
doubtedly be somewhat decreased, but no nation would be 
consumed for the benefit of another nation, and every nation 
would export exactly what it could best afford to spare, and 
which would be of the greatest benefit to the nation receiving 
it. The result of such a rational tariff would be that every 
nation adopting it would buy cheap and sell dear ; would buy 
what it most required, and sell what it could best do without. 
Every nation adopting such a tariff would make the most of 
its own natural resources, and be perfectly protected from the 
rapacity of other nations. If all nations should adopt the 
same kind of a tariff, every nation would make the most of 
its own resources, and international commerce would be car- 
ried on for the benefit of all nations and the injury of none. 

If the proper, rational and correct method of restricting 
international commerce, by a new nation, in its own interests, 
is by an advalorem tax on exports, while imports are admit- 
ted duty free, how much worse than free trade, how perfectly 
unreasonable, how insane, is the tariff of the United States, 
which averages about 41 per cent, advalorem duties on im- 
ports, while the exports are pushed out of the country duty 
free ! 

The advocates of this inexpressibly absurd tariff assert 
that, if a nation sells more than it buys, it is getting rich ; 
and consequently they encourage the sale and exportation of 
that very wealth which European nations must buy of us, 
and which makes them rich. These insane advocates of this dia- 
bolical tariff insist on forcing the sale of our wealth at what- 
ever prices Europe cares to give, thus keeping us dependent 
on a European market in which we are obliged to sell. To 
compel us to buy less than we sell, the entrance of wealth 
into our country is checked, and in part prohibited, by duties 
on imports, which amount on the average to forty-one per 



Rational Tariff. 95 

cent, advalorem. It is claimed that, when we are thus com- 
pelled to sell more than we buy, the "balance of trade is in 
our favor," and that that balance will be paid us in gold. 

In the practical workings of this theory, we have been for 
about one hundred years, steadily sending off to Europe as 
much as possible of that bountiful supply of natural wealth 
which should have enabled the United States to keep all Eu- 
rope at its feet. VVe have received, in exchange, the products of 
European labor, so called ; that is, small quantities of natural 
or material elements made valuable by labor, — worked up 
into articles of consumption, largely articles of luxury, which, 
being consumed or worn out, are gone forever, leaving a 
worthless, or nearly worthless residue. 

Only a very small part of the time have we had the much 
coveted " balance of trade" in our favor. During such inter- 
vals, of course, "gold has flowed in;" but, some how or 
other, in some manner which the admirers of that "balance" 
have failed to explain, the gold very soon flows out again, 
and we find ourselves without either money or goods, with 
the masses in a miserable condition after each outflow, and 
more and more nearly approaching the poverty of the people 
of European countries. 

Now the sane and business-like method, in this matter, 
would be to get a good price for our goods ; sell exactly 
what we can best spare, and what other people most want ; 
and buy cheap all that we require of other nations. The 
idiotic thing we do now, is to force the sale, at unnecessarily 
low prices, of large quantities of the very articles that our 
own people need, and should consume, or use in production ; 
and this we do for the purpose of increasing the number of 
dollars' worth of goods sold. At the same time we discour- 
age importations, by heavy import duties, making all im- 
ported goods scarce and dear. And all this is in pursuit of a 
will-o'-the-wisp, — a cash balance which is always flitting, 
flashing, and disappearing. 

What business-man, in managing his own affairs, ever 
questions the simple fact that it is better to buy cheap and 
sell dear than to buy dear and sell cheap, — better to do a 
small and profitable business than a large and losing one % 
Yet the people of the United States are deliberately asked to 
believe that the nation which sells more (dollars' -worth) than 



96 Rational Takiff. 

it buys, is necessarily getting rich, even if it sells ridiculously 
cheap and buys extravagantly dear. 

The present tariff of this country is an outgrowth of a sel- 
fish struggle between classes having conflicting private inter- 
ests to advance, and selfish purposes to serve. Agricultur- 
alists who desire to sell their cotton, wheat, beef, and other 
products, to the best advantage to themselves, and manufac- 
turers who desire to secure a foreign market, use their pow- 
er and influence in favor of free trade, — because, if they can 
send their produce or wares out, duty free, they can get the 
full price in the foreign market, less the cost of transporta- 
tion ; while, as consumers and employers of labor, they of 
course wish to have everything in this country, except what 
they have to sell, as cheap as possible, and are therefore 
opposed to any duties on imports, because such duties tend 
to make everything in the county dear. Opposed to the agri- 
culturalists, producers and manufacturers who depend 
upon a foreign market, are a class of manufacturers, or 
would-be manufacturers, and agriculturalists or would-be 
agriculturalists, who desire to make a business of supplying 
the home market with goods or produce which can be manu- 
factured or produced more cheaply abroad. This class of 
patriots (?) delight in having an export duty on "raw 
materials" of the varities used by themselves, as on cotton 
for example, and a prohibitory duty on imports of the kinds 
which they wish to produce and sell. 

The rich, as a class always willing to favor anything which 
will relieve them from taxation, gladly consent to any tariff, 
or anything else, that will furnish a revenue to the govern- 
ment, but advocate a "tariff for revenue only," considering that 
tariff the best which produces the largest revenue to the gov- 
ernment, and consequently affords the greatest relief to them. 

The poor, as a class, particularly the class who call them- 
selves "working men," and vote in favor of what they believe 
to be the "interests of labor," are ignorantly and stupidly 
in favor of what (to deceive them) is called a "protective 
tariff", — which, in general terms, means that raw material 
should be imported, duty-free, when it is to be manufactured 
in this country ; that foreign manufactured-goods should be 
admitted only upon the payment of heavy duties ; and that 
the exportation of everything should be unrestricted. 



Rational Tariff. 97 

Our present tariff is a compromise or adjustment of these 
several selfish interests. It will be seen, however, that our 
tariff is just about what the "working men" are in favor 
of, and they of all others are the worst sufferers by its bane- 
ful results. 

If any "working man" who reads this book will do a 
little thinking for himself, just here, he will observe that the 
classes who are really benefited by our present tariff are in 
favor of cheap labor. Large farmers, stock-raisers, planters, 
and all exporters of raw materials, are in favor of no duties 
on exports, and want cheap labor. All manufacturers who 
have a foreign market want to export their goods, duty-free, 
and employ cheap labor. All manufacturers who depend on 
supplying the home-market with goods that could be bought 
cheaper in foreign countries, are in favor of duties on im- 
ports, to raise the price of their goods, but not to raise the 
price of labor: — they want cheap labor. The rich, if engaged 
in business, want cheap labor ; and, if not engaged in 
business, want labor not only cheap but servile. They all 
want cheap labor. Our present tariff, and unrestricted 
immigration gives it to them ; and "working men" loudly 
and energetically insist on having it just so. 

The existing tariff makes every valuable thing, — everything 
that is bought and sold for money, — scarce and dear in this 
country. If any one thing, at any time, becomes compari- 
tively cheap, it is immediately exported, duty-free, to some 
country where it is dearer ; consequently, everything in this 
country, except our articles of export must necessarily be 
dearer here than any where else in the world. And, evident- 
ly, articles of export themselves are made scarce and 
dear by the very fact that they are exported in large quanti- 
ties. Fortunately, the cost of transportation sometimes 
causes an exception in our favor. 

The duties on imports directly make all imported articles 
scarce and dear ; and by forcing industry into unnatural pur- 
suits, such duties indirectly tend to prevent any thing what- 
ever, except labor, from becoming cheap. Labor is as easily 
exported or imported as anything else'. There is no duty on 
imported working men, and consequently labor can never be, 
or continue to be, very much dearer here than in foreign 
countries. 

13 



98 - Rational Takiff. 

The certain and inevitable result of our present tariff sys- 
tem is this : 

First : Everything consumed by the working man is made 
more scarce and dear here than in any other country, — that 
is, one dollar in money always buys less here than in other 
countries. 

Second : The money- wages can never be much if any high- 
er here than in other countries, because immigration soon 
equalizes wages whenever any difference becomes manifest : — 
as long as it is known or believed that wages in this country 
are higher than elsewhere, foreign laborers will continue to 
come here, and in increasing numbers, until wages are lower 
here than in the countries whence they come. 

In the light of these facts, it is evident that our present 
"protective" tariff is about the best one that could be devised 
to hoodwink the masses and cheapen labor. It reduces 
money-wages in this country to the level of money-wages in 
other countries, and keeps them at or near that level, while 
a given number of dollars always buys less here than in 
other countries. It is a question whether or not real wages 
are yet reduced, with us, to the European level ; but, if they 
are not, they soon must be, under existing legislation. Then, 
a working man in this country will always be compelled to 
consume less than do working men in other countries ; his 
real wages will be less ; his labor will be cheaper : — he will 
get just about the same number of dollars for the same work 
as he would in other countries, but he will buy less with his 
dollars. 

With free importations, all kinds of goods which can be 
produced in foreign countries more cheaply than in this 
country would be imported, and would be cheap, allowing 
home industry to seek natural and legitimate channels, and to 
produce such things as can be produced here to the best ad- 
vantage. With an advalorem duty on exports, all goods of 
the kinds exported would of course be cheaper here than in 
other countries. This advalorem duty should be about 
twenty per cent., — for the following reason. The people of 
a nation being entitled to a rent of two per cent, per annum 
on the value of all assets, when an asset is exported the ex- 
porter should render an equivalent to the people for the rent 
of the asset, in perpetuity. This equivalent I estimate approxi- 



Rational Tariff. 99 

mately as equal to twenty per cent, of the market value of 
the asset. That is to say, the natural duty on all exports 
should be twenty per cent, advalorem. 

With such a rational tariff, everything in this country 
would be as cheap as, and many things very much cheaper 
than, in other countries. The money-wages, — the number of 
dollars paid for a given quantity of labor — would never vary 
greatly from the money- wages of other countries, for any con- 
siderable time ; because emigration, if unrestricted, would 
tend to equalize money-wages in the several countries. 
Nevertheless, money- wages, in this country, with such a tariff, 
would range somewhat lower than the average in countries 
where a different tariff prevailed ; because, everything being 
so much cheaper here, it would become known that one dol- 
lar would buy more here than anywhere else, and that fact 
would have its effect on immigration. 

In one word, with a rational tariff in this country, money - 
wages would be about the same, or a little less, than in other 
countries ; but real wages would be very much higher here 
than anywhere else where such a tariff had not been adopted, 
other things being equal. 

Whenever, in a new country, rich in fertile lands and nat- 
ural wealth of various kinds, labor is unemployed or poorly 
paid, it is because of the monopoly of wealth by the few, or 
of unwise and unjust laws which prevent men from using the 
materials with which nature has provided them. In every 
such country, it will be found that the legislators are either 
irresponsible despots, or political tricksters, or rich men, or 
some combination of the three. 

Our so-called republic is governed by rich men and poli- 
ticians, who join hands to fleece the people, and struggle with 
each other for the spoils. The politicians want a large rev- 
enue, and the rich do not want to be taxed, but do want to get 
and hold as much of the wealth of the people as possible. 
They agree together to pass laws in favor of monopoly, for the 
benefit of the rich, and to tax the poor for the benefit of the 
politicians. The poor wish they were rich, or could get an 
office, and would, as a rule, be every bit as unjust as their 
masters, if they had the opportunity. N 

In this country, successful politicians soon become rich. It 
is wonderful how much money they can save in a few years. 



100 Rational Tariff. 

Being rich, they continue to legislate ; and virtually we are 
governed by property-holders who will tax everything except 
property and everybody except themselves, and are thereby 
enabled to hold on to the mines and the land, and every other 
thing that would make labor productive, — not using it them- 
selves, perhaps, or allowing others to do so, but creating and 
maintaining a dog-in-the-manger monopoly, that keeps many 
thousands idle, and forces millions to work for a very poor 
living. 

A uniform advalorem tax on assets would compel such leg- 
islators and property-holders to loosen their grip on the 
wealth of the people, or to compete with each other for pro- 
ductive labor, in order that they could produce enough, or 
have enough produced for them, to pay taxes, provide for 
their own support, and pay their workmen besides. 

The tariff of the United States cheats the consumers of im- 
ported goods, every year, out of about $260,000,000, which 
should be paid to the government by the rich in the form of 
an advalorem tax on assets ; it increases the cost of living at 
least twenty-live per cent., thereby directly cheating the peo- 
ple out of $1,250,000,000, every year, which individuals would 
otherwise be able to save from their income ; it forces indus- 
try into unnatural channels, and thereby makes labor very 
much less productive than it otherwise would be. Every pro- 
ducer of goods for exportation, whether a manufacturer or 
agriculturalist, is directly injured by the duties on imports. 
Every workingman, and every citizen, in fact, of the whole 
country, except only one small class of manufacturers, is in- 
jured in the price of everything he consumes, and in the loss 
of opportunities to make an honest living. The only persons 
benefited are the small class of manufacturers just referred to, 
who are factitiously enabled to do business, at such an enor- 
mous cost to the people, by having a home market created 
for them through this masked- robbers' protective tariff. 

It is said that a nation like the United States should be able 
to manufacture or produce everything, or nearly everything, 
necessary to its well being, and that many manufactories 
which cannot be made profitable in their infancy would be- 
come self-sustaining if once well established ; and that, there- 
fore, the government should protect them when young. If 
this is true, and undoubtedly it is, the people should pay di- 



Rational Tariff. 101 

rectly for what they desire to secure in the matter, by award- 
ing premiums to assist individuals or corporations in estab- 
lishing the desired industries. By so doing, the people would 
accomplish the purpose at a minimum of cost to themselves, 
instead of at the outrageous price at present paid. 

If we are to have any other than the rational tariff, — if we 
are to have a "discriminating" tariff, — let the discrimina- 
tions be on the side of humanity, or at least of patriotism, 
instead of in favor of a privileged few, at the expense of 
national prosperity and popular well-being. 

As an example of what: might be done by " discrimination," 
suppose that the United States, Russia, and Egypt should 
agree together to impose an export duty of 40 per cent, ad- 
valorem on wheat and corn, Europe would be compelled to 
pay the enhanced price, and import nearly as much as she 
does now ; and wheat and corn would become very much 
cheaper in the United States, Russia, and Egypt. 

As another example, suppose that the United States should 
impose an export duty of forty per cent, advalorem on raw 
cotton, and allow manufactured cotton goods to go out free. 
A very large proportion of the cotton manufactories of Eu- 
rope would be compelled to close, and a corresponding pro- 
portion of the raw cotton now exported would be manufac- 
tured here, and the goods exported. Such a "discrimina- 
tion," in the matter of cotton and cotton goods, would give 
the United States so much of a monopoly of the entire cotton 
industry of the world that not a yard of cotton goods could 
be sold by manufacturers in Europe until the American cot- 
ton crop was exhausted ; that is to say, American manufac- 
turers would get their raw material 40 per cent, cheaper than 
their European rivals, and would have that advantage in the 
European market ; and this country would therefore be en- 
abled to sell a larger crop of cotton than at present, at the 
same price for the raw material, — because, being sure of a 
market both at home and abroad, manufacturers here would 
compete with each other for the crop, and could afford to pay 
even more than present prices for every pound of it. 

Better than any discriminating tariff, would be the simple, 
rational one, that would admit all imports duty free, and im- 
pose a uniform advalorem duty of twenty per cent, on all 
exports. 



102 Rational Takiff. 

The individual who produces wheat or corn, or cotton or 
cotton goods, holds the articles produced by him as certifi- 
cates of purchasing-power, or evidences of the indebtedness 
of the people to him ; but his ownership is subject to and 
limited by the superior ownership of the people, and he has 
no right to export such articles without paying the people for 
their interest in them. The government, as the agent of the 
people, has no right to allow wealth of any kind to be ex- 
ported without exacting an equivalent for the common 
ownership of it, or enforcing the condition that as much 
wealth shall be imported in exchange. 

With just money in use, gold and silver would not be 
required as a circulating medium ; would, though still valua- 
ble, cease to be articles of prime necessity, except perhaps in 
very small quantities ; and would, with precious stones, 
constitute a class of assets which, in proportion to their value, 
would be the least useful, the least wanted, of all sssets. 
Therefore no other class of assets of equal value could be 
spared by the people with as little inconvenience. To encour- 
age their exportation in preference to more useful wealth of 
equal value, precious stones and precious metals might be 
exempted from the otherwise uniform duty on exports im- 
posed by the rational tariff. Their value in this country, in 
any case, would increase and decrease with their scarcity, 
and their outflow and inflow would, if not interferredwith,be 
perfectly self-regulating. 

Should just money and a rational tariff be adopted by the 
United States, it is perfectly evident that, after international 
commerce and the business of the country had perfectly 
adjusted themselves to such a tariff and to such money, the 
value to this country of the imports would exceed that of the 
exports by exactly twenty per cent. This means neither 
more nor less than a direct profit or gain to the nation of 
twenty per cent, advalorem on all goods sold to foreign 
countries ; that is, in every exchange made with foreign 
countries, this nation would exchange in the proportion of 
eighty for one-hundred, — would give or pay eighty dollars 
worth, and receive one-hundred dollars worth in exchange 
for that eighty. This would be true whether other nations 
adopted the same tariff or not. If all nations should adopt 
just money and a rational tariff, every nation would make a 



Rational Tariff. 103 

clear gain or profit equal to twenty per cent, of the value to 
that nation of its exports, and international commerce would 
have become exactly what it should be, — namely, a natural 
and just system of exchanges directly benefiting each nation 
exactly in proportion to the value of its exports or imports. 

The exports of the United States consist principally of food 
and raw materials. For food, European nations are so far 
dependent upon us that we could sell them nearly or quite 
as many dollar's worth of it as we do now, even if we should 
impose an export duty of fifty per cent, advalorem. The 
grain we export is " raw material" for the European millers, 
and leather is raw material for foreign shoe and harness 
makers, while our cotton is the raw material upon which the 
immense cotton manufacturing industry of Europe principally 
depends 

If we had a discriminating tariff which would take these 
facts as a basis, — which would impose all the export duties 
on food that " the trafic would bear," and such duties on 
raw material that our millers would grind our grain and our 
mills manufacture our cotton, etc., etc., and would let the 
manufactured articles go out with light duties, or duty free 
if necessary to secure a foreign market, — such a "discrimi- 
nating tariff" would increase the employment of capital and 
labor, and be a great improvement on anything yet tried in 
this or any other new country ; but, a rational tariff and just 
money would " protect " every man, woman and child in the 
country from hunger, cold and want, by making all desirable 
wealth cheap and abundant, creating a general demand for 
labor and consequently increased wages in every branch of 
industry, while directing industry itself into its most natural, 
effective and productive, and therefore most profitable chan- 
nels. 



CHAPTER XX. 

PERPETUAL ELECTIONS. 

" To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole 
is indispensable. No alliance however strict between the parts can be a substi 
tute. * * * The basis of our political system is the right of the people to 
make and to alter their constitutions of government. * * * The very idea of 
the power and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the 
duty of every individual to obey the established government. * * * For the 
efficient management of your common interests in a country as extensive as ours, 
a government of as much vigor as is consistent with perfect security of liberty, is 
indispensable. * * * Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn 
you in the most solemn manner, against the baneful effects of the spirit of party 
generally. This spirit exists under different shapes in all governments, more or 
less stifled, controlled or repressed ; but in those of the popular form it is seen in 
its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. * * * Tis substantially 
true that virtue or morality is a nescessary spring of popular government ; pro- 
mote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general dif- 
fusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force 
to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." 

GEORGE WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 1796. 



" In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if 
we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties, if anything partial or 
extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, independent 
elections." 

JOHN ADAMS, March 4, 1797. 



"All too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that, though the will of the 
majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable ; 
that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and 
to violate which would be oppression. * * * We are all Republicans : we 
are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to disolve this 
union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monu- 
ments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated when reason is 
left free to combat it. * * * With all these blessings what more is nescessary 
to make us a happy and prosperous people ? Still one thing more fellow citizens: 
a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one 



Perpetual Elections. 105 

another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of ^indus- 
try and inprovement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it 
has earned." 

THOS. JEFFERSON, March 4, 1801. 



" Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this Conti- 
nent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal. * * * We here highly resolve * * * that the 
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." 

ABRAHA.M LINCOLN, at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery. 



" We do not intend to lose by ballots what we won with bullets." 

T. C. de MOSQUERA, Grand General of Colombia. 



" The American Republic is to-day unquestionably the foremost of the nations 
— the van leader of modern civilization. * * * At the rate of increase so far 
maintained, the English-speaking people of America will, by the end of the cen- 
tury, number nearly one hundred millions — a population as large as owned the 
sway of Rome in her palmiest days. * * * The rapidity of our development 
brings dangers that can only be guarded against by alert intelligence and earnest 
patriotism. * * * A community composed of very rich and very poor falls 
an easy prey to whoever can seize power. The very poor |have, not spirit and 
intelligence enough to resist ; the very rich have too much at stake. * * * 
There is a significant fact that strikes us as we think over the history of past eras 
and preceding civilizations. The great, wealthy, and powerful nations have 
always lost their freedom ; it is only in small, poor and isolated communities that 
Liberty has been maintained. * * * Liberty is natural. Primitive precep- 
ceptions are of the equal rights of the citizen, and political organization always 
starts from this basis. It is as social development goes on that we find power 
concentrating, and institutions based upon the equality of rights passing into 
institutions which make the many the slaves of the few. * * * And gradually, 
as power thus concentrates, primitive ideas are lost, and the habit of thought 
grows up which regards the masses as born but for the service of their rulers. 
* * * The same methods which, in a little town where each knows his 
neighbor, and matters of common interest are under the common eye, enable the 
citizens to freely govern themselves, may, in a great city, as we have in many 
cases seen, enable an organized ring of plunderers to gain and hold the govern- 
ment. So,, too, as we see, Congress, State Legislatures, and the executive 
and judicial departments tend constantly to pass beyond the scrutiny of the peo- 
ple. * * * Thus the growth of society involves danger of the gradual conver- 
sion of government into something independent of and beyond the people, and 
the gradual seizure of its powers by a ruling class. * * * It behooves us to 
look facte in the face. The experiment of popular government in the United 
States is clearly a failure. Not yet, perhaps, a failure everywhere and in every- 
thing. But an experiment of this kind does not have to be fully w r orked out to 
be proved'a failure. Speaking generally of the whole country, from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, our government by the people 
has in large degree become, is in larger degree becoming, government by the 
14 



106 Perpetual Elections. 

strong and unscrupulous. * * * The people, of course, continue to vote ; 
but the people are losing their power. * * * If we would really make and 
continue this a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, we 
must give to our politics earnest attention ; we must be prepared to review our 
opinions, to give up old ideas and to accept new ones. We must abandon preju- 
dice, and make our reckoning with free minds. The sailor, who, no matter how 
the wind might change, should persist in keeping his vessel under the same sail 
and on the same tack, would never reach his haven." 

HENRY GEORGE, April, 1883. 



By a republic I mean "a government of the people, by 
the people, and for the people ;" a government of which the 
people is sovereign ; a state, nation, or community in which 
the will of the people is law. 

Sovereignty is the right to define and enforce the right. 
Sovereignty is the right to make laws and enforce them. 
Sovereignty is the right to govern the people. 

If all citizens had exactly the same notions of right and 
wrong, "and each desired only that the right should prevail, 
there would be nothing for a sovereign to do ; but, unfortu- 
nately, or fortunately, there are " many men of many minds, 
and many men do not agree." Therefore it is necessary that 
somebody or something should decide between them, and 
enforce the decision, — that in society some authority be rec- 
ognized and submitted to by individuals. Such authority 
with the power to enforce its edicts is sovereignty. In a re- 
public, the people, considered as a collective entity, is that 
authority to which all individuals must submit : — individual 
will is subject to the collective will. 

It is essential to the existence of a true republic that the 
will of the people be promptly and exhaustively ascertained, 
formulated intelligibly, announced and enforced. A true re- 
public is not necessarily a perfect government, because the 
legitimate object of government is correctly to define and 
enforce the right. A wise people, — a community in which 
the citizens severally are intelligent and well-instructed, — will 
make right laws ; because, right and wrong are based upon 
the desires and wants of individuals, and each citizen will 
base his desires upon his wants, and will be the best judge of 
his own wants. Popular education and free discussion en- 
lighten the individual and make a wise people ; therefore. 



Perpetual Elections. 107 

" error of opinion may be safely tolerated where reason is 
left free to combat it." "Institutions for the general diffti- 
sion of knowledge " should be promoted, "as an object of 
primary importance," and " virtue or morality " will be the 
result. The sovereign people will correctly define and enforce 
the right, and the republic will approximate more and more 
nearly to a perfect government as individuals increase in 
knowledge and improve in virtue and morality. 

A true republic is yet an untried experiment, except on a 
small scale or in a small community. Every attempt to 
found or establish a truly republican nation has proved abor- 
tive. In this country, as well as in all modern republics, so 
called, where honest and true-hearted men have made such 
an attempt, the result has been an oligarchy, or a government 
of the people by the few, and for the few. 

And why % 

It is because dependence has been placed upon the secret 
ballot and periodical elections, for ascertaining and announc- 
ing the will of the people. Long and bitter experience has 
proved conclusively that the ballot is exceedingly liable to 
fraudulent manipulation, is inefficient even for periodical 
elections, and is useless for continuous or perpetual elec- 
tions, or for any full or comprehensive expression of the 
will of the people; In the United States a deadly "infection" 
has destroyed whatever of purity existed, in the days of 
Washington and Adams, in what the latter designates as 
" our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." Our 
liberties have not only been endangered, but much is already 
lost ; and, in spite of the warning of Jefferson, the " pursuits 
of industry" have been so regulated as to "take from the 
mouth of labor the bread it has earned." 

The limits of this work will not permit me to discuss, at 
any length, the defects of our present methods of electing 
representatives and legislators, nor will the thoughtful reader 
think it necessary that I should do so. Every newspaper 
published in the country is a record of election frauds and 
political corruption resulting therefrom. A "free ballot and 
a fair count," if they ever did exist in reality, are now things 
of the past. Of the two principal political parties, that which 
believes itself to be the more popular at any given election is 
inclined to favor a free ballot and a fair count ; and the other, 



108 Perpetual Elections. 

believing itself to be in a minority, is more inclined to oppose 
that kind of voting. But the fact is that the ballot is manip- 
ulated not by either party, but by the few leading tricksters 
of each party, who manage to secure results that suit 
themselves. 

The key to the true republic is perpetual voting, or con- 
tinuous elections. The world will yet have to learn that 
it is only by the aid of such voting and elections that a true 
republic can be established or maintained. 

The ballot is fit only for periodically electing representa- 
tives or public officers, and for occasionally voting yes or no, 
for or against, some proposed law. It is objectionable even 
for that purpose, because of the opportunity for fraud its 
employment affords. That the people of this nation should 
have for so many years considered it an efficient instrument 
for expressing their will, and should have so confidently 
allowed their liberties to depend upon it, is one of the myster- 
ies of the human intellect. 

The will of the people is the will of innumerable majorities, 
and is, in reference to any particular act or measure, exactly 
what a majority of the people desire to have done. In regard 
to a proposed law, for example, everj^ individual in the na- 
tion should have an opportunity to vote for or against any and 
everyfword, and to propose alterations and amendments, in 
such manner that when a law came into force every word in 
it, and the law as a whole, should be in accordance with the 
will of a majority of all citizens ; that is to say, no law can be 
considered to be according to the will of the people, if, upon 
being submitted word by word to the people, and each word 
voted upon separately, a majority of the people vote against 
any one word in it. 

In the possibility of this unlimited separation of issues, and 
the submitting of every part of a question to the people, in- 
stead of " pooling the issues," or grouping them together, as 
has always been necessary heretofore, and as always will be 
necessary without perpetual voting, lies the difference be- 
tween a government by the people and a government by 
political parties. The warning of Washington against the 
baneful effects of the spirit of party, as the worst enemy of 
popular government, was useless, and always will be useless, 
until perpetual voting gives expression to the will of the peo- 



Perpetual Elections. 109 

pie, and thereby abolishes political parties altogether by de- 
stroying their power. 

The will of the people is continually changing ; and, to es- 
tablish a true republic, a voting system is necessary by which 
the popular will and its changes can be ascertained and an- 
nounced with a promptness and accuracy equal to that with 
which the thermometer indicates and announces the tempera- 
ture of the atmosphere and the continuous changes to which 
it is subject. 

By the present system of elections, we vote once in four 
years for a President of the United States. With a system 
of perpetual voting, every qualified citizen would have his 
name properly recorded at the voting place, and, with his 
name, the name of his candidate, or the person of his choice. 
Whenever he changed his mind, and preferred a different 
person, he would have the corresponding change made in the 
record. All citizens being provided with the necessary facili- 
ties for thus recording and changing their votes, the record 
of all the votes would constitute a perfect expression of the 
will of the people. When the record announced that some 
new candidate was preferred by the people, the correspond- 
ing change would be made in the office. Exactly this man- 
ner of voting continuously, or perpetually, for a President 
of the United States, would perhaps never be found conve- 
nient or necessary ; but by this example the reader will be 
enabled to understand wherein the difference lies between 
perpetual or continuous voting and periodical voting. 

To convert the United States into a true Republic, a prac- 
tical and efficient system of perpetual voting is necessary, and 
that system must be so provided with suitable checks and 
guards that fraudulent results will be impossible. To make 
the republic a good as well as a true one, several new features 
must be introduced and many old institutions purified. 

Inasmuch as popular government is based upon a recogni- 
tion of certain fixed principles, it follows that a true repub- 
lic must be based upon a constitution, or organic statutory 
law, which shall, in a general but unmistakable manner, de- 
fine the vital principles and elements necessary to the exis- 
tence of a republic. A written constitution is not only the 
primary and essential feature of a true republic, but it must 
necessarily constitute a complete outline of such a republic. 



110 Peepetual Elections. 

Laws must necessarily be statutory or conventional ( com- 
mon); that is, they must be formulated, written, recorded 
and published as statutes, or they must consist of such infor- 
mal and unwritten laws as always exist by common consent 
or usage in any community, governing the actions of citizens 
in many cases that the statutes do not cover. Statutory laws 
must necessarily consist of laws of every degree of scope 
and detail, begining with one of the greatest possible scope 
and importance, to which all others are subordinate and 
must conform. Such a statute will be the constitution of a 
true republic, and will necessarily be the highest and most 
comprehensive expression of the will of the people, — the 
highest law of the republic. 

This constitution will proclaim, as the basis of all rights, 
that the object of all being is the welfare of the conscious ; 
that the object of government is to establish justice ; that the 
people is sovereign ; that citizens are equal ; that perpetual 
voting and popular education are necessary to the sovereignty 
of the people. 

At present, no effective method of continuous and progres- 
sive discussion of questions of general interest is provided. 

The periodical sessions of legislative bodies are unsatis- 
factory. Our congress and legislatures waste a large portion 
of their time in organizing and getting ready for business, a 
great part of which is necessarily left unfinished at the end 
of the term, and must be begun over again at some subse- 
quent term, — thus subjecting the people to unnecessary 
delay or to the evils of hasty legislation. 

Nearly all the most serious evils of our present system are 
incidental to our defective and wholly wrong methods of 
taxation, the want of just money, our insane tariff, the secret 
ballot, and periodical elections. 

The concluding chapter of this book consists of a proposed 
amendment to the constitution of the United States, in which 
is described the necessary voting and election reforms, and 
certain incidental changes involved therewith. That I have 
succeeded in pointing out the very best combination of 
details that could be adopted I do not presume ; but that 
perpetual elections are necessary, and that the system de- 
scribed in the amendment is substantially the right one, — 



Perpetual Elections. Ill 

the only one that can make a true, progressive, and prosper- 
ous republic possible, — 1 have no doubt. 

It is a matter of congratulation that mankind are not more 
disposed than they are to join state to state and nation to 
nation. 

It would undoubtedly be as well or better for humanity, if 
to-day every existing nation should be split up into two or 
more fragments ; because the stronger and more permanent 
a bad government is the worse for the people. And every 
existing government certainly maintains exceedingly bad 
institutions, yet resolutely opposes changes of any kind. 

Small bodies are more easily moved than larger ones, and 
the smaller a nation is the more likely it is to move in the 
direction of the prevailing tendency. Less knowledge is 
required to manage the affairs of a small than a large nation, 
and the people of a small nation are more likely to see their 
own interests than are the people of a larger nation. In any 
one of our modern nations containing not more than three- 
millions of people, all the leading citizens are known to each 
other and to the masses, every man's individuality is more 
marked, and his personal influence is comparatively greater, 
than it would be in a larger nation. Public opinion in a 
small nation is much more easily reached and influenced than 
in a larger one. Therefore it appears that the chances of 
having any radical reform accepted are much greater in a 
small than in a large nation ; and so powerful is the influence 
of successful reform that, if any one nation, however small, 
should successfully solve the problem of practical good gov- 
ernment, and establish a true republic, the whole world 
would be soon converted, and the universal republic the 
sooner established. 

From this view, it would appear that large and powerful 
nations are an impediment to progress, and,^ in the interests 
of humanity, should be broken up as soon as possible. But, 
on the other hand, if, in a great and powerful nation, like 
the United States, the progressive forces are stronger than 
the conservative and retrograde, it would be a great misfor- 
tune to have such a nation go to pieces. In the United 
States no reform can succeed until it becomes popular, which 
is as it should be ; but, if the oligarchy which rules the 
country can, by trick and device successfully prevent any 



112 Perpetual Elections. 

radical and desirable reform from becoming popular, and 
that oligarchy is likely to perpetuate itself and its powers, 
then is our cherished union a failure. Every reader will form 
his own opinion of the facts ; 'but it appears to me that the 
realization of the hopes of the founders of this government 
depend on whether or not the people of this nation recognize 
the principles and adopt the measures of reform necessary 
to complete the outline of a true republic. 

In a republic the sovereignty is indivisible: it belongs to the 
whole people considered as a unit. To understand this propo- 
sition it is necessary to bear in mind that the sovereign does 
not confer individual rights ; it is his business simply to 
define and enforce natural rights. The people of any locality 
should be allowed to regulate their own affairs only to the 
extent that the rights of individuals are more likely to be 
known and protected by the local authority than by the 
general authority. The local authorities, or people of a 
locality, are subject to the people of the nation, and act as 
the agents of the latter exactly as a local governer appointed 
by a king would be the subject of the king, and considered 
as the agent or representative of that sovereign. 

By a system of elections which would convert the United 
States into a true republic all danger of any very great retro- 
grade movement anywhere in the world would be forever 
passed. Any great radical and successful reform in the 
United States, if that reform were for the better, would soon 
be adopted by all Spanish America, and perhaps by France. 
With a succession of such reforms, monarchies would rapidly 
disappear from the world, republics would take their place, 
and these would soon be merged in the Universal Republic. 

The fraudulent practices incidental to voting by ballot do 
not constitute the most serious objection to that method ; 
because, if the people were fully awake to the evil, and 
determined to remedy it, possibly the " purity of the ballot" 
might be maintained. But the ballot, even if "purified," 
is suitable only for periodical or occasional voting, and would 
be useless for perpetual voting. Politicians generally under- 
stand how to have a " free vote and a fair count " when such 
a vote and count suit their purposes. For example, in elect- 
ing officers at a convention, or in an assembly, when the 
members are sufficiently interested, every member is given 



Pekpetual Elections. 113 

an opportunity to name the candidate he prefers, and the 
voting goes on systematically and fairly :— ballot follows 
ballot, until a choice is made ; and the candidate elected 
in that manner is the one who most nearly represents the 
collective will of the members at the moment the choice 
is made. 

The vital defect in our governmental experiment is that our 
elections are periodical instead of perpetual. 

We elect presidents, governors, congressmen, legislators, 
and all public officers, not during good behavior, not until it 
suits us to remove them, but for a fixed and definite period. 
The officers and trustees of all business associations, stock 
concerns, or corporations, are elected in the same manner and 
for similar periods. The result is, and always will be, exactly 
what the very nature of man should lead us to expect ; 
namely, that, however promising our candidates may be be- 
fore election, they will, as a rule, make the most of their term 
of office to advance their own selfish ends. In an assembly 
or body so elected, the selfish majority outvoting the more 
conscientious minority, if there is a conscientious minority, will 
invariably make such laws, or take such action, if possible, 
as will tend to perpetuate and increase their own power. 
The affairs of the nation being in the hands of bodies so con- 
stituted, a spoils-system is invariably the result, — a system 
growing more and more corrupt with the growth of the nation, 
degrading politics to a mad, mercenary struggle between 
parties ; corrupting the people ; destroying their liberties ; 
and leading the nation blindly on to civil war, anarchy, de- 
struction. By perpetual voting, on the contrary, the people, 
or the members of an assembly, or of a stock concern, or 
other association, have a continuous, prompt, and full ex- 
pression of their will. A law is passed, representatives elect- 
ed and removed at the will and pleasure of their constituents, 
a candidate requires votes to keep him in office as well as to 
elect him to office, and if he retains his office it is because 
people continue to vote for him. He will be thus held imme- 
diately and directly responsible to the persons who have 
selected him as their representative, and if he fails in any re- 
spect to represent their desires or wishes he will immediately 
be reminded of the fact by having so much ( of his power de- 
part from him. If he proves himself able and efficient, his 

15 



114 Perpetual Elections. 

power will increase exactly in proportion to the number of 
voters who approve of his course. 

Perpetual voting, though perfectly simple and easily car- 
ried out, and not liable to be fraudulently perverted, would 
require for its adoption some radical changes in the present 
details of our national organization. Such changes, though 
simple and easily accomplished, are not to be understood 
without patient attention, and cannot be described except at 
some length. Therefore the final chapter of this book is de- 
voted to a proposed amendment to the constitution of the 
United States, in which perpetual voting is specifically out- 
lined. The chapter is somewhat formidable in appearance, 
though much less so in reality. If the careless or incredu- 
lous reader fails to take it into his understanding, so much 
the worse for everybody concerned ; but whoever will thor- 
oughly investigate the matter of perpetual voting, whether as 
applied to political or business affairs, will be convinced that, 
as a matter of fact, the world will never get on well without 
it. 

We cannot have a republic without perpetual voting, and 
we cannot have either without popular education. 

Inasmuch as a republic will be good or bad in proportion 
to the wisdom or ignorance of the voters, government is in 
duty bound to insist on their liberal education as a matter of 
primary and vital importance, and should use compulsion 
when necessary. Government may cause to be prepared a 
series of books containing all that voters are to be compelled 
to learn. Permanent boards of examination may be estab- 
lished to examine every child, say on or about its birthday, 
every year, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the child 
has learned during the preceding year the contents of the 
book or books corresponding to its age. When the child 
passes the examination creditably, it may be left to itself or 
to its parents or guardians for the ensuing year ; otherwise it 
should be placed at once in a public school, to remain there 
until it makes up the deficiency, and should then be dis- 
charged until the time of the next annual examination. 

Every child would thus be compelled to acquire the educa- 
tion demanded and provided for by the government, at a 
minimum of expense to the government, and in a manner that 
should be perfectly and universally satisfactory, 



Perpetual Elections. 116 

The right to education is the equal right of all citizens. 
This equal right is certainly violated when the government 
establishes a school system by which a few receive a superior 
education, at the expense of the people, while others, less 
favored, are only taught some of the most necessary elements, 
cannot gain admission to the schools, or cannot even find 
time and opportunity to attend. 

The average citizen is so much occupied with his own pri- 
vate affairs that he has little time or inclination for the study 
of disputed points in religion, politics, finance, and other 
matters of general interest which he thinks do not seriously 
and immediately affect himself ; and the public discussion of 
all such matters is generally carried on by parties who have 
a selfish interest in it, not identical with the interests of the 
people. 

When such questions are taken up by the political parties, 
the discussion is generally carried on for the purpose of se- 
curing or defeating some partisan legislative action, and when 
the act is either passed or defeated, the discussion ends for 
the time, and public attention is diverted to something else, 
before a thorough understanding of the broader principles in- 
volved has been reached. The people adopt, as their own, 
the opinions of the party leaders, for the sake of obtaining a 
party triumph, or adopt hastily some plausible theory confi- 
dently and cunningly advanced by the newspapers or poli- 
ticians. Thus it happens that very few of the great questions 
which from time to time agitate the public mind, are ever 
fully understood and finally settled ; they are brought up, 
time and again, and discussed in the same superficial and 
partisan spirit, and with the same result. The public ear is 
filled with the " vaporings of public speakers," " the roar of 
oratorical demagogues," and the fool-catching purchasable 
arguments of a mercenary partisan press. The impartial 
voice of the statesman, and the writings of the honest 
thinker, are quite unheeded. 

This state of affairs will continue, and human progress will 
be correspondingly slow, until a genuine government by the 
people is established, by means of perpetual elections, and 
until the wisdom of all the people is utilized for the solution 
of all questions of general interest. 

According to our proposed amendment to the constitution, 



116 Peepettjal Elections. 

the method of introducing new measures, to be voted on, will 
utilize the wisdom of all the people, and every voter can 
readily present his views in a concise form to the public. 
The ideas thus formulated and recorded will be forever se- 
cured to the people, — to be voted for, tried, used, perman- 
ently incorporated in the legislation of the country, or finally 
rejected as erroneous or defective. This process may be 
called the process of perpetual discussion. By it, every 
question, once started, will be afterward continually before 
the people, and will be treated with the united wisdom of all 
the people, until finally disposed of as it should be. This 
process of preserving all proposed measures in the public 
records is indispensable to the conservation of ideas. 

Our proposed amendment to the constitution of the United 
States would consummate the highest purposes of the found- 
ers of this nation. It would really establish a government of 
all, by all, for all, as distinguished from a government by the 
one, the few, or the many. Every voter would vote always, 
continually, perpetually, to obtain or secure just what he 
most desired in or from the government, and every voter 
would get just as much of what he voted for as would be 
compatible with the equal power and conflicting desires of all 
voters, — the constitution and laws, limiting, adjusting, and 
defining the equal rights of all on the basis of natural rights. 
The manner of voting, of recording, announcing and publish- 
ing all votes and everything connected therewith, would ren- 
der fraudulent manipulation of any kind impossible. The 
method of proposing measures, and of their publication and 
preservation in the printed election reports, in combination 
with the right to vote perpetually for any measure whatever, 
would secure the benefit of every idea presented, and its dis- 
cussion, adoption, or rejection on its merits, and without un- 
necessary loss of time, — thus carrying into effect the princi- 
ples of " perpetual discussion " and the u conservation of 
ideas." 

Under our amendment, also, the method of electing mem- 
bers of the several legislative bodies and qualified candidates 
for all positions of equal importance to that of district trus- 
tee, makes every employee of the government a true servant 
and faithful representative of the voters who sustain him in 
his position, while at the same time he is dependent upon his 



Perpetual Elections. 117 

superiors for this particular position or office which he may- 
hold. He will retain his office as long as he represents a 
sufficient number of voters to qualify him with the character 
of a representative or acceptable candidate, and at the same 
time gives satisfaction to the superiors who appoint and can 
remove him at will. He will certainly be a servant and not 
a master of the people. 

Each and every employee of the government will represent 
a particular group of voters, and no two employees will be 
likely ever to represent exactly the same group. Every voter 
is likely to be represented at all times by some employee in 
the government service, and in every branch of it. 

The Senate will be composed of about two-hundred and 
fifty members, each member being voted for, like all other 
employees, by a distinct group of voters. The members of 
the Senate will always be the two-hundred and fifty most 
popular citizens of the republic, instantly responsible to their 
constituents for every vote or action. But they will be per- 
fectly unembarrassed by this circumstance ; because after the 
system has been in operation a sufficient time to become 
thoroughly adjusted they will be elected for their known 
opinions, character, ability, and sentiments ; and, if honest 
and able, they will find that honesty and ability, wherever 
exhibited, will increase rather than diminish their consti- 
tuency. 

The legislative power of the Senate, exercised with unre- 
strained freedom, and controlling every branch of the gov- 
ernment, will be limited by the constitution, and the "laws 
of the people." The laws of the Senate will be practically 
supreme, unless they conflict with the higher laws ; but, if 
the Jaws enacted by the Senate are obnoxious to the people, 
the members responsible for the obnoxious laws will immedi- 
ately find themselves in a minority, and the obnoxious laws 
will be repealed. 

Each State Legislature will consist of about forty of the 
most popular men of the State, next to those who are candi- 
dates for the Senate, and it will be constituted in a similar 
manner to the Senate, and to the county and district legisla- 
tive bodies. 

The principle of perpetual voting is perfectly applicable to all 
forms of government, either of states or of corporations of any 



118 Peepetual Elections. 

kind, and for any legislative or deliberative body where vot- 
ing is to take place. Stock companies and corporate asso- 
ciations will never be managed in the interests of the stock- 
holders or members until they adopt a system of perpetual, 
recorded voting. The secret ballot is inefficient : it' is illu- 
sive as to secrecy, and is exceedingly liable to be fraudu- 
lently misused. 

Perpetual voting is perfectly applicable to all elections for 
public functionaries in the United States. An article of our 
proposed amendment describes a method of applying that 
kind of voting with perfect facility and very great advantage, 
to the election of President of the United States, and with- 
out touching any other department of the government. 

Should that method of electing a President be adopted, we 
should then have, for the first time, one essential feature of a 
true republic, and a President would be President because 
really preferred by the peopte to any other man. He would 
retain his office just as long as no other candidate should be 
preferred to him, and another would take his place just as 
soon as the recorded votes of the people demanded such a 
change. By every popular act he would gain votes ; by 
every unpopular act he would lose votes. He would be just 
what the constitution of the United States intended he should 
be, the representative of the whole people. There would be 
no more question about how long a presidential term should 
be, nor about a second or a third term, or holding office dur- 
ing good behaviour, or of impeachments, or any other of the 
unanswerable conundrums always inseparable from the carry- 
ing out of the present illogical, inefficient system, radically 
wrong, and necessarily unsatisfactory to everybody except 
the few who are in a position to take advantage of its defects. 

Should a system of perpetual voting, for any purpose, be 
once introduced, a true republic would rapidly develop ; 
and the true republic would be fully established as soon as 
no other system of voting were employed. But the complete 
adoption of perpetual voting, with the checks, guards, and 
facilities described in our proposed amendment to the consti- 
tution, would at once convert the United States from an oli- 
garchy into a government of the all. 

The constitution of the United States does not provide any 
way by which the people can amend it, except through the 



Perpetual Elections. 119 

oligarchal authorities themselves ; that is to say, not until 
public opinion has become so decided, demonstrative and 
imperative, that three-fourths of the Legislatures of the 
several states can be controlled by it to the end proposed: 
But the progress made by the people in securing reform of 
any kind that does not originate in the conflicting interests 
and demands of powerful and influential rings, cliques or 
combinations of politicians or capitalists, is inconsiderable. 
In the meantime the nation is moving steadily toward dis- 
integration and destruction, on the one hand, and Asiatic fos- 
silization on the other, with all that the latter involves, — a con- 
dition like that of China, where every citizen is either a 
millionaire, a successful politician, a soldier, a policeman, or 
a pauper, in the proportion of one millionaire to one million 
paupers. 

But, in spite of difficulties and impediments, it is certainly 
high time that the constitution of the United States should 
be amended, — in certain features, at least, essential to the 
very existence of republican institutions. That constitution 
was the best that could be agreed upon by the representatives 
of the thirteen states who signed it. It is the constitution of 
an oligarchy, and was known to be such by those who framed 
it. But it was not their wish or intention to have it remain 
so. Their intention was that it should be amended and im- 
proved, from time to time, until it should become the con- 
stitution of a government by the all. 

The world of thought moves in the direction of human 
equality and practical justice, while the constitution keeps 
pace only with the requirements of oligarchs, in their lust of 
wealth and power. 

The people must have it amended, and carry out the hopes, 
wishes, and purposes of the founders of this government, by 
the adoption of such improvements as, after the experience 
of a century, we are convinced are necessary to the pro- 
gress of humanity. 



P. S.— The first political opinion that I remember to have 
formed, was to the effect that in this country an experiment 
in democratic government had been tried, with perfect suc- 
cess, leaving nothing to be desired, no room for improvement. 
Entertaining that opinion at the time of Harrison's election to 



120 Perpetual Elections. 

the presidency of the United States, I expressed to my father 
my surprise at the fierceness of the struggle then going on 
between opposing political parties, about what appeared to 
me to be insignificant or self-regulating matters of detail in 
our nearly perfect republic. My father's answer was as 
follows : 

" This is an oligarchy. A true republic is possible only 
with perpetual elections." 

Not until twenty years afterward did I fully understand 
his statement, and know its truth and importance. Another 
twenty years were required to enable me to recognize the 
essentials of a permanently good government, and prepare 
the outline of it given in this work. These essentials are, 

Fiest, Perpetual elections : 

Second ; Popular education, compulsory when necessary : 

Third ; Systematic discussion by the people of all matters 
of general interest, — perpetual discussion : 

Fourth, The conservation of ideas : 

Fifth, Honest revenue, — the death- rate tax : 

Sixth, Just money : 

Seventh, Rational tariff. 

Every one of these requisites must be provided for, in the 
organic law of our land, before any citizen can have his own, 
or justice prevail, or liberty be realized, or a true republic 
exist. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. 

In order that what I have termed " Perpetual Elections" 
may be understood in system, and seen to be thoroughly 
practicable both in realization and results, a manner of apply- 
ing such elections is here given, in the form of an amendment 
to the United States Constitution. Included incidentally in 
this amendment, are the features, also, of "Perpetual Discus- 
sion " and "The Conservation of Ideas," as well as certain 
points, not in themselves essential to perpetual voting, but 
needed to illustrate this one application of it. 

ARTICLE I. 

TERRITORIAL AND POLITICAL DIVISION. 

Section 1. 
STATES AND TERRITORIES. 

Clause 1. The territory of the Republic shall be divided 
into states, or into states and territories. 

Clause 2. The division into states, or into states and 
teiritories, shall, at first, be made in accordance with the fol- 
owing provisions : Provision 1st. No state* shall have a 
greater area than 110,000 square miles. Provision 2d. The 
whole number of persons in each state shallnot be less than 
the number of square miles in its area. Provision 3d. The 
whole number of persons in each state shall not be less than 
100,000 nor more than 1,500,000. Provision 4th. No state in 
which the whole number of persons is less than 1,000,000 shall 
have a less area than 90,000 square miles. Provision 5th. 
All territory, that cannot in accordance with the four preced- 
ing provisions be included within the limits of the several 
states, shall be divided into territories not exceeding 110,000 
square miles in area each. Each territory shall become a 
state whenever the whole number of persons residing in it 
shall exceed 110,000. 

16 



122 Constitutional Amendment 

Clause 3. After the original, or first adjustment of bound- 
aries, in accordance with clause 2 of this article, the states 
thereby created shall each retain its boundaries, then defined, 
until it shall have a population of 2,000,000 persons. 

Clause 4. Whenever the whole number of persons in a 
state shall be 2,000,000 it shall be divided into two states con- 
taining 1,000,000 each. 

Section 2. 

COUNTIES. 

Clause 1. i^ach state shall be divided into counties. 

Clause 2. No county shall have a greater area than 1,100 
square miles. The whole number of persons in each county 
shall not exceed 20,000. When the whole number of persons 
in any county dpes not exceed 10,000 the area of the coun- 
ty shall not be less than 1,000 square miles. 

Clause 3. Whenever the whole number of persons in a 
county shall be 20,000 it shall be divided into two counties 
containing 10,000 each. 

Section 3. 

DISTRICTS. 

Clause. 1. Every county shall be divided into districts. 

Clause 2. No district shall have a greater area than 110 
square miles. The whole number of persons in any district 
shall not exceed 2,000. When the whole number of persons 
in any district does not exceed 1,000, the area of the district 
shall not be less than 100 square miles. 

Clause 3. When the whole number of persons in any 
district is 2,000 it shall be divided into two districts con- 
taining 1,000 persons in each. 

ARTICLE II. 

LEGISLATIVE POWERS. 

Section 1. 

AGENTS OF THE PEOPLE. 

The sovereignty of the people of the Republic of America, 
(heretofore known as the United States,) shall be vested in 
agents or agencies of 13 classes or grades, each of which shall 
be superior in authority (sovereignty) to all below it on the fol- 
lowing list, and subject to all above it on the same list except 
as limited by this constitution ; as follows : 



Constitutional Amendment. 123 

Agent No. 1, the highest in class or grade, is a three-fourths 
vote of the people of the Republic. 

Agent No. 2, a two-thirds vote of the people of the Republic. 

Agent No. 3, a regular vote of the people of the Republic. 

Agent No. 4, the Senate of the Republic. 

Agent No. 5, a two-thirds vote of the people of a State. 

Agent No. 6, a regular vote of the people of a State- 
Agent No. 7, the Legislature of a State. 

Agent No. 8, a two thirds vote of the people of a County. 

Agent No. 9, a regular vote of the people of a County. 

Agent No. 10, the board of Councilmen or Council of a 
County. 

Agent No. 11, a two-thirds vote of the people of a District. 

Agent No. 12, a regular vote of the people of a District. 

Agent No. 13, the board of Trustees of a District. 

Section 2. 
POWERS OF THE AGENTS. 

Clause 1. The Senate of the Republic (agent No. 4,) 
shall furnish each State, County, District, and Territory with 
a constitution, and shall establish and limit the powers of 
the State Legislatures, County Councils, District Trustees, 
and Territorial authorities. 

Clause 2. States, Counties and Districts shall be classed 
into five classes according to the extent of territory and 
number of inhabitants of each, and the constitution furnished 
each State, County or District shall be exactly the same as 
that furnished to every other State, County or District of the 
same class. 

Clause 3. Any law of the Senate shall be superior to any 
conflicting law which may be enacted by any of the agents 
or agencies from 5 to 1 3 inclusive. 

Clause 4. Laws may be enacted by a two-thirds concur- 
rent vote of the people of the Republic (agent No. 2,) which 
shall be superior to laws of the Senate (agent No. 4,) but 
inferior to the constitution. 

Clause 5. Laws may be enacted by a two-thirds vote of 
the people of a State, County, or District (agents Nos. 5, 8, 
and 11,) which shall be called respectively State, County and 
District laws of the people, and which shall have the same 
relation to the respective constitution and legislative bodies 



124 Constitutional Amendment. 

of the several States, Counties, and Districts, (agents, 7, 10, 
and 13,) that the laws enacted by a two-thirds vote of the 
people of the Republic have to the constitution and to the 
Senate. 

Clause 6. The judicial power of the Republic of America 
shall be vested in one national supreme court, in one high 
court in each State, and in such inferior courts as the Senate 
may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges of 
the supreme court, of the high courts, and of the inferior 
courts, shall be appointed by the Senate, or by the Legisla- 
tures, Councils, or boards of Trustees as the law shall deter- 
mine, and shall hold office until removed by the regular vote 
of the people. The rate at which they are paid shall not be 
reduced while they are in office. 

Clause 7. All matters relating to war or to naval or mili- 
tary affairs including the appointment and nomination of 
military and naval officers shall be regulated by law. 

Clause 8. A two-thirds vote of the people of the Repub- 
lic (agent No. 2,) shall have power to revoke, repeal, alter, 
amend or modify any act whatever of the Senate. 

Clause 9. The legislative powers of the Republic of 
America are wholly delegated to and vested in the Senate 
except as limited by the provisions of this constitution. 

Clause 10. The Senate shall have the power and it shall 
be the duty of the Senate to enforce by appropriate legisla- 
tion the provisions of this constitution. 

Clause 11. The Senate shall determine to what extent and 
tor what purposes the local authorities (agents 5 to 13,) may 
increase or diminish taxation. 

Clause 12. A three-fourths vote of the people of the 
Republic (agent No. 1,) shall have power to alter or amend 
any article, clause, or section of this constitution except 
articles I and II. 

Clause 13. When eight-tenths of all the qualified voters 
of the Republic shall vote concurrently in favor of amending 
this constitution in any manner whatever, the constitution 
shall be so amended. 

Clause 14. A concurrent vote of three-fourths of the peo- 
ple of the Republic (agent No. 1,) shall have power to revoke 
the decisions or remove the judges of any court, to remove 
any public officer or employee of the people, and to disqualify 



Constitutional Amendment. 125 

any person whatever from holding any office or employment 
under the government. 

Clause 15. By a two- thirds or a three fourths vote of the 
people is meant : that the number of voters of the Republic, 
or of the State, County, or District, as the case may be, who 
vote individually and concurrently in favor of the act, law, 
or proceeding in question, is equal to two-thirds or three- 
fourths of all the qualified voters of the Republic or of the 
State, County, or District. By a regular vote of the people 
is meant any vote of the people that the constitution and laws 
make competent and effective for the purpose involved. 

Clause 16. Be it understood that there is but one govern- 
ment established by this constitution ; to wit : a government 
by the people, of the people, for the people of the whole 
Republic ; that the sovereignty of the people is complete and 
undivided except inasmuch as it is necessarily delegated to 
the several agents or agencies, to be exercised by them as 
agents of the people. 

Section 3. 
THE LEGISLATIVE BODIES. 

Clause 1. All the legislative bodies of the Republic 
(agents Nos. 4, 7, 10, and 18,) shall be permanent and the 
sessions perpetual or continuous. 

Clause 2. They shall meet for the transaction of business 
at the respective places of meeting on not less than two-hun- 
dred days in each year. 

Clauses. The regular hours and places of meetings shall 
be fixed by law. 

Clause 4. When the hour of meeting shall arrive the 
names of members shall be called, and the names of present 
and absent members shall be noted. 

Clause 5. All members shall be paid by the day, and 
only for the days upon which they are present and answer to 
their names when their names are called at the regular place 
and hour of meeting. 

Clause 6. If a member is absent when his vote is required 
he shall be entitled to no pay for that day. The rate of pay 
per day shall be established by law. 

Clause 7. All members who are to act as officers shall be 
elected at each meeting without debate and by chance, imme- 



126 Constitutional Amendment. 

diately after the calling of the names of members and in 
the following manner : as each member answers to his name 
a ball shall be dropped into a suitable receptacle so that after 
the calling of all the names the receptacle will contain as 
many balls as there are members present, and among them as 
many white balls as there are officers to be elected, the other 
balls being black. The receptacle shall then be well shaken 
and one member after another shall proceed to draw out a 
ball. The members who draw the white balls shall be the 
officers for that day or meeting and until the next election is 
had. The first white ball that is drawn elects to the least 
important office, the second white ball drawn to the next 
more important office, and so on up to the last white ball 
which shall elect the presiding officer. Should any of the 
officers thus elected not wish to serve they may resign in 
favor of other members who are willing to take their places. 

Clause 8. Two-thirds of the members of the respective 
legislative bodies shall be required to constitute a quorum to 
do business, but a smaller number may adjourn from day to 
day and may be authorized to compel the attendance of 
absent members in such manner and under such penalties as 
shall be determined by the Senate, No member shall absent 
himself from the meetings or be excused from duty, unless 
he shall have leave or be sick or be unable to attend or 
serve ; or unless he may formally resign his membership for 
a definite period which period shall not be less than one 
month. 

Clause 9. The places of meeting of the various legislative 
bodies may be called political centers, and shall be located 
permanently by law ; that of the Senate at the capitol of the 
Republic and the others within the limits of the respective 
States, Counties, and Districts, and at the most convenient 
and suitable localities. 

Clause 10. Such exceptional laws as may be necessary 
may be enacted for the government of a district not to exceed 
ten miles square, in which the National Capitol is situated, 
and for a district not to exceed one mile square at the politi- 
cal center of each State. 

Clause 11. The Senate (agent No, 4,) shall consist of a 
single body of not less than 200 members. 



Constitutional Amendment. 127 

Clause 12. Each State Legislature (agent No. 7,) shall 
consist of a single body of not less than 30 members. 

Clause 13. Each County Council, (agent No. 10,) shall 
consist of a single body of not less than 15 members. 

Clause 14. Each district board of Trustees (agent No. 13,) 
shall consist of a single body of not less than six members. 

Clause 15. The management of the affairs of all counties 
that have a less population than 2,000 persons, and of all 
districts that have a less population than 500, shall be con- 
sidered exceptional and shall be regulated by the Senate. 
But the Senate shall in this, as well as in the management of 
the affairs of the Territories of the Republic, depart as little 
as is consistent with economy and good government from the 
methods observed in the more populated regions. 

Clause 16. Each legislative body shall keep a journal of 
its proceedings, and the Department of Elections shall pub- 
lish the same in the Election reports excepting such parts as 
require secrecy. The yeas and nays of the members on any 
question shall at the desire of any one member be entered on 
the journal. A two- thirds vote shall be required to decide 
that any part of the journal requires secrecy. 

ARTICLE III. 

CANDIDATES AND EMPLOYEES. 

Clause 1. All employments under the Government shall 
be considered either regular or exceptional employments. 

The law shall determine which shall be considered excep- 
tional employments. Until any employment is declared by 
law to be exceptional it shall be considered regular. 

The duties of members, or the membership of the various 
legislative bodies, shall always be considered regular employ- 
ments. 

Clause 2. Regular employees shall be classed as follows : 

Class 1st. All employees including Senators of the Repub- 
lic considered of higher grade than State Legislators. 

Class 2d. All employees including State Legislators con- 
sidered of higher grade than County Councilmen and of 
lower grade than class 1. 

Class 3d. All employees including County Councilmen 
considered of higher grade than District Trustees and of 
lower~grade than class 2. 



128 Constitutional Amendment. 

Class 4th. District Trustees and all employees equal in 
grade to District Trustees. 

Class 5th. All employees inferior in grade to District 
Trustees. 

Clause 3. 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th class candidates are 
candidates for employment of the grade or class of the same 
number. 

Clause 4. Any citizen desiring to accept any employ- 
ment of class 5th is a qualified 5th class candidate. Any 
citizen voted for is a candidate of the class defined by the 
vote. 

Clause 5. 1st Class candidates are qualified, or elected, 
by the voters of any or all parts of the Republic. 

2nd Class candidates are qualified, or elected, by the votes 
of the State in which the candidate^resides. 

3d Class candidates are qualified and elected by the voters 
of the county in which the candidate resides. 

4th Class candidates are qualified or elected by the voters 
of the district in which the candidate resides. 

Clause 6. Every qualified voter shall have one perpetual 
or continuous vote for one candidate of each of the first four 
classes ; that is to say, one vote for a first-class candidate ; 
one vote for a second-class candidate ; one vote for a third- 
class candidate, and one vote for a fourth-class candidate. 

Clause 7. Any citizen shall be declared to be a qualified 
first-class candidate whenever not more than one hundred 
unemployed 1st class candidates have more votes each than 
he has, and shall continue to be a qualified 1st class candi- 
date or a first-class employee, until and only until 200 unem- 
ployed first-class candidates have more votes each than he 
has. 

Any unemployed qualified first-class candidate shall be 
declared to be elected a member of the Senate of the Repub- 
lic whenever not more than 200 Senators have more votes 
each than he has, and shall continue to be a Senator until 
and only until 250 members of the Senate shall have more 
votes each than he has. 

Clause 8. Any citizen shall be declared to be a qualified 
2d class candidate of the state in which he resides whenever 
not more than thirty unemployed 2d class candidates of the 
same state have more votes each than he has, and shall con- 



Constitutional Amendment. 129 

tinue to be a qualified 2d class candidate or employee until 
and only until 40 unemployed 2d class candidates of the 
same state have more votes each than he has. 

Any unemployed qualified 2d class candidate of a state 
shall be declared to be elected a member of the Legislature of 
that state whenever not more than 30 members of that Legisla- 
ture have more votes each than he has, and shall continue to 
be a member of the same until and only until 40 members 
shall have more votes each than he has. 

Clause 9. Any citizen shall be declared to be a qualified 
3d class candidate of the county where he resides whenever 
not more than 15 unemployed 3d class candidates of the same 
county have more votes each than he has, and shall continue 
to be a qualified 8d class candidate or employee until and 
only until 25 unemployed 3d class candidates have more votes 
each than he has. 

Any unemployed 3d class candidate shall be declared elect- 
ed a member of the board of councilmen of his county when- 
ever not more than 15 members of that board have more votes 
each than he has, and shall continue to be a councilman 
until and only until 20 members of that board shall have 
more votes each than he has. 

Clause 10. Any citizen shall be declared to be a qualified 
4th class candidate whenever not more than six unemployed 
4th class candidates in the same district have more votes each 
than he has and shall continue to be a qualified 4th class 
candidate or employee until and only until 10 unemployed 
4th class candidates of the same district have more votes 
each than he has. 

Any unemployed qualified 4th class candidate shall be 
declared elected a member of the board of Trustees of his 
district whenever not more than six members of that board 
have more votes each than he has, and shall continue to be a 
member until and only until 10 members have more votes 
each than he has. 

Clause 11. Every citizen shall be free to accept or not, 
and after accepting, to resign any employment to which he 
may be elected or appointed, but while voluntarily holding 
any employment, he may be compelled to fulfill the duties 



130 Constitutional Amendment. 

and obligations connected therewith and be liable to legal 
penalties for neglect of the same. 

Clause 12. No individual shall hold more than one 1st, 
2d, 3d, or 4th, class position or employment at one time. 

Clause 13. The appointing power shall be apportioned 
among the Legislative bodies, the heads of departments, and 
others, as shall be determined by law. 

Clause 14, No regular office or employment under the 
government shall be held by any person who is not, while 
holding the same, sustained therein by as many votes of the 
people as are at the same time required by an unemployed 
qualified candidate of the same locality and class to enable 
the latter to remain a qualified candidate of that class; that is 
to say, he must retain, while he holds his office, as many 
votes as he would have required, as a qualified candidate, 
had some other been appointed in his stead, or as many votes 
as he would require should he exchange places with some 
unemployed qualified candidate of his own locality and class, 
except only in case that it be necessary for an incumbent or 
employee to hold over until another is appointed to succeed 
him. 

Clause 15. No employee of the government in any capaci- 
ty whatever shall ever be appointed or elected for any fixed 
or determined period of time, but all shall be at any time 
liable to be superseded by the appointment or election of a 
successor, or to be removed by the proper authorities. 

Clause 16. All regular employees of the government 
shall be appointed from the corresponding class of unem- 
ployed qualified candidates and the appointments shall be 
made from each locality about in proportion to the whole 
number of persons in the locality. 

Clause 17. All persons in the service of the government 
in any capacity whatever are employees. 

Clause 18. All employees except contractors, and on 
conditions specified in the contracts, shall be paid for their 
services in money. 

Clause 19. All citizens are eligible to any office or 
employment to which they may be duly elected or appointed. 



Constitutional Amendment. 131 

ARTICLE IV. 

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS. 
Section 1. 

OFFICERS AND VOTING PLACES. 

Clause 1. The department of elections shall be considered 
one of the most important institutions of the Republic. 

Clause 2. Commodious offices and voting places supplied 
with all necessary appliances and conveniences, shall be 
provided. 

Clause 3. There shall be one general office at the capitol 
of the nation, and a central office at each of the political cen- 
ters of the respective states, counties and districts. When 
more than one voting place is required in a district the dis- 
trict shall be divided into precincts, each precinct having a 
voting place, so that each voter may vote in his own precinct 

Clause 4. All voting places shall have telegraphic com- 
munication with the office at the center of the district, all 
district offices with the county central office, all county cen- 
tral offices with the state central office, and all state central 
offices with the general office at the capitol of the Republic. 

Section 2. 

VOTING. 
Clause 1. Any citizen who shall go to the voting place 
in his district or precinct and make it known to the clerk in 
attendance that he is a resident of that district or precinct, 
shall have his name and residence registered by the clerk, 
and shall be deemed to be a qualified voter for the next 
succeeding six months. The date of the recording or the 
renewal of every vote shall be noted in the register opposite 
the name of the voter, and every voter shall be deemed a 
qualified voter for six months after the date of his last vote 
or renewal, unless he shall be known to be disqualified for 
other reasons ; but, if more than six months shall pass dur- 
ing which a voter does not vote or renew his votes, his votes 
shall not be counted thereafter, nor shall he be esteemed a 
qualified voter in counting the number of qualified voters in 
the district ; but, if otherwise qualified the voter may fully 
qualify himself again, by again having his name registered 
by the clerk. 



132 Constitutional Amendment. 

Clause 2. Persons, or candidates, shall be voted for by 
their names ; and measures shall be voted for by numbers. 

Each voting place shall be provided with suitable blank 
forms upon which the vote is to be written. 

When a voter shall present himself at the voting place for 
the purpose of voting, he shall receive from the clerk a suita- 
ble blank form, and shall write thereon in a legible hand, 
the names of the persons or candidates, or the number of the 
measure he wishes to vote for 01 against, he shall date the 
document, sign it, and hand it to the clerk ; the clerk shall 
copy it on a similiar blank and date, sign and hand the copy 
to the voter, the voter should keep the copy and the clerk 
shall keep the original. Thus the voter and the clerk will 
have a mutual check on each other. 

The clerk shall then proceed to enter the vote in the Rec- 
ord or books where all votes are recorded, with the names of 
the corresponding voters. 

The vote thus recorded shall be the vote of that voter for 
six months thereafter unless changed by the voter before the 
six months shall have expired. 

Every qualified voter can vote perpetually or continuously 
by renewing or changing his vote every six months or of tener. 

Section 3. 
ELECTION RETURNS. 

Clause 1. From the records or recorded votes of each 
district the returns shall be made out. As much as relates 
to the County, State, or Nation shall be telegraphed to the 
county central office. Prom the county central office all that 
relates to the state or nation shall be telegraphed to the 
state central office. Prom the latter office all that relates 
to the general affairs of the nation shall be telegraphed to 
the general office at the capitol of the nation. 

Clause 2. Notice of all appointments or election to em- 
ployments of 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th class qualified candidates, 
or other regular elections, or appointments to important em- 
ployments, shall be immediately communicated to the Depart- 
ment of Elections. It shall be the duty of the Department 
of Elections to judge of all elections by the people and to 
announce the result to the persons elected and to the public. 
Suitable rules and regulations for the same shall be estab- 
lished by law, but no rule or regulation shall be adopted that 



Constitutional Amendment. 133 

will give a periodical character to the system of voting and 
elections. 

Clause 3. In each precinct or district two books or sets 
of books shall be employed, constituting the Record of that 
precinct or district. 

The two books or sets of books shall be used alternately. 

While one book, or set of books, is being used for record- 
ing the votes of the day or hour, the returns shall be made 
out from the other set, or book, the change from one set of 
books to the other being made as fast as the returns can be 
made out with the facilities provided or with the number of 
clerks employed. 

The result shall be announced in the district and communi- 
cated to the central office of the County, State, and Nation. 

At all the central offices a similiar continuous or perpetual 
system, with two sets of books to be used alternately, shall 
be employed by which the result can be made out every hour 
or every day or every week according to the force of clerks 
employed for the purpose. The vote of the whole Republic, 
or of a State, or of a County, or District, shall be considered 
to be the vote, as shown by the books and records, at the 
moment the change of books or sets of books takes place. 

Clause 4. The exerciser!' the right to vote being neces- 
sarily limited by the facilities and appliances for voting, and 
the right to vote being equal, rules and regulations must be 
established by law to determine how many persons, or candi- 
dates, or measures may be voted for at the same time by each 
voter, and how many times each voter may exchange his vote 
within a given time, when the same is not determined by the 
constitution, but the facilities and appliances shall be as 
ample as the people can afford and the right of each indi- 
vidual to vote for whom and what he pleases at any and all 
times shall only be limited by such rules and regulations as 
will secure to all voters the equal enjoyment and use of the 
facilities and appliances provided. 

Section 4. 
THE ELECTION OF ONE. 

Should the law determine that a certain employee shall be 
elected alone or by an independent election by the people, 
each voter w T ill vote for a person by name and will, to decide 



134 Constitutional Amendment 

what percentage of voters shall elect a candidate to the office 
in question, vote some number between I and 100. 

All the numbers thus voted being added together, and the 
sum divided by the number of voters, who have voted, will 
give some number between one and one hundred, which num- 
ber shall be the number per cent, of the whole number of 
qualified voters required at the time to elect. 

When any candidate shall have a number of votes in his 
favor equal to or greater than the number at the time required 
to elect he shall be declared elected and shall hold his posi- 
tion or employment until another is elected to take his place. 

Section 5. 

ELECTION REPORTS. 

Clause L The Department of Elections shall publish 
continuous printed reports, in a form suitable for binding in- 
to books, to be called, respectively, the National, State, 
County, and District Election Reports. 

These reports shall be printed in sufficient quantities to 
keep a supply on hand for sale at every District voting 
place. 

The printing shall be done by contract and the price at 
which the reports are sold to voters shall never exceed the 
cost of yjaper and printing. 

Each District shall be supplied with the State and County 
reports of the State and County to which the District be- 
longs and also with the National Reports. 

Clause 2. The Department shall have the Election Re- 
ports bound into volumes of convenient size as fast as the 
successive issues will form volumes of convenient sizes, and 
the bound volumes must be supplied in sufficient quantities to 
the various districts to meet the demand for them, at a price 
which shall never exceed the cost. 

Clause 3. The election reports shall contain the official 
publication of the proceedings of the several Legislative 
Bodies, and of everything of interest or importance connected 
with the elections and the Legislation of the Republic, in 
such manner that all laws can be found therein, as well as 
all proceedings connected with the enactment of laws ; and 
in such maniier that each voter can find for sale at his own 
voting place, and for cost, everything required in the matter 
of information to enable him to vote intelligently. 



Constitutional Amendment. 135 

No advertisement or irrelevant matter of any kind shall be 
incorporated in the Election Reports, but the department 
shall as a measure of convenience to the public publish and 
circulate an advertising sheet or sheets with the election re- 
ports in which sheets articles and advertisements shall be 
charged for at prices sufficient to make the matter self-sup- 
porting. 

Clause 4. The department shall see to it that the proper 
provision is made for preserving the reports so that the peo- 
ple may at all times have a complete history of the legisla- 
tion of the country. 

Clause 5. Each District in its first Election Report, shall 
publish the names of all the qualified voters of the district 
and the vote of each exactly as recorded in the District Rec- 
ord, and in each successive report shall be published all 
changes that shall have been made during the intervals be- 
tween the successive reports, in such manner that a perfect 
printed record of the business of each district shall be furnish- 
ed to the public, and that each voter may by reference to the 
reports see whether his votes have been properly recorded 
and counted. 

Clause 6. Each County and State office, and the general 
office of the department at the capitol of the Republic, shall 
in like manner publish, in their respective reports, the returns 
received and made out by them in such manner that any 
voter who may examine and compare the four reports to wit : 
the National Election Report, his State Election Report, his 
County Election Report, and his District Election Report, shall 
be able to trace his vote, the vote of his district, the vote of 
his county, and the vote of his state, to the national report 
and see that all have been correctly reported and duly 
counted. • 

Clause 7. Laws enacted by the Senate or by the people 
of the whole Republic shall be known as laws of the Republic. 

Laws enacted by the people or Legislative bodies of the 
States, Counties, and Districts shall be known as State, 
County and District laws respectively. 

Clause 8. Any citizen who may desire to propose a meas- 
ure, to be voted on by the people or to be acted on by any 
legislative body, may do so by writing it out in due form 
of law in a legible hand writing, in decent language and over 



136 Constitutional Amendment. 

his own signature, and handing it to the clerk of his own 
voting place with the regular fee. 

The fee shall not exceed the cost of publishing the propos- 
ed measure in the proper election report. 

Clause 9. The Department of Elections shall print and 
publish the proposed measure duly numbered : if a National 
measure in the National Election Report, if a State, County, 
or District measure in the corresponding State, County or 
District Election Report. 

Clause 10. All laws voted for by the people shall origi- 
nate in the manner above described, every one of them must 
be proposed as a measure over the signature of one person 
only and be published in the corresponding Election Report 
before they can be voted on. The Legislative Bodies may 
or may not as they see fit consider any measure proposed in 
this way. 

Clause 11. The measures thus published and numbered 
may be voted for by the corresponding number at any time 
after they are published ; if a national measure, by any quali- 
fied voter of the nation ; if a state measure, by any qualified 
voter of the state; if a county or district measure by any 
qualified voter of the county or district. 

Clause 12. Whenever two-thirds of the qualified voters, 
of the corresponding locality or of the whole nation as the 
case may be, shall vote at one and the same time in favor of 
a measure, the measure shall become a law and be called a 
law of the people. 



THE END. 



ERRATA. 



Page 40, line 36. For " would " read " will." 

Page 51, line 5. For " produce of land" read " produce of labor." 

Page 60, line 14. For "injure more than they benefit " read "injures more 
than benefits." 

Page 99, line 3. For " should be " read " would be. " 



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